Leave a Comment Jacob Combs
Filed under: Sevcik v Sandoval
Nevada’s state Assembly taking action on pro-LGBT bills
By Scottie Thomaston
Nevada legislature
The state of Nevada is moving forward on pro-LGBT legislation. This week the state Assembly added gender identity and expression to its existing hate crimes legislation. The state’s Republican governor Brian Sandoval is expected to sign the bill:
Similar legislation passed in the state assembly during the last legislative session in 2011, only failing in the Senate. During that session, the legislature passed transgender inclusive non-discrimination legislation in housing, public accommodations and employment. Republican Governor Brian Sandoval signed all three pieces of legislation during the first year of his first term and is expected to sign this bill as well.
The bill passed overwhelmingly, with only one senator voting no last month, and a large number of House members voting for it this week:
The Assembly passed the measure on a 30-11 vote with only Republicans opposed. The bill already cleared the Senate and now heads to Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval.“This does afford victims special rights,” said Assemblyman Andrew Martin, D-Las Vegas, who is openly gay. “This is a statement of what our society is, and that we will not tolerate the systematic targeting of individuals who are historically disadvantaged groups.”
Sandoval spokeswoman Mary-Sarah Kinner told The Associated Press Tuesday that the governor supports the legislation.
The bill, SB139, would add “gender identity or expression” to the list of motivations deemed to be hate crimes under state law. Supporters outlined in graphic detail several instances of the violent nature of crimes motivated by hate, saying the added protection would help deter more violent crimes.
As EqualityOnTrial recently reported, the state is also moving forward on marriage equality, albeit at a much slower pace. A constitutional amendment to replace the anti-gay marriage amendment would eventually be placed on the ballot in 2016, after it passes this legislative session and then gets through the Assembly again in 2015. With three weeks left in the session, the bill should pass quickly.
Activists in the state have been pursuing marriage equality there for years. The state’s domestic partnership law treats same-sex couples almost exactly the same as opposite-sex married couples, but same-sex couples are denied the title of marriage. That regime is seen as irrational, and it’s being challenged in federal court by Lambda Legal in Sevcik v. Sandoval, who believes the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage denies them equal protection of the laws. That case is on hold, though, pending the Supreme Court decisions in Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor. The district court had ruled against the plaintiffs, same-sex couples, and the case is on appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. But the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage, the proponents of the ballot initiative that amended the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, petitioned the Supreme Court to review the case before judgment at the appeals court. The plaintiffs oppose review at this stage. The Court hasn’t taken action on their petition and no other action is expected until the Court’s other rulings. The Sevcik case is expected to be heard on a parallel track with Hawaii’s marriage equality case, Jackson v. Abercrombie. The Ninth Circuit, which struck down Prop 8, seems like a more favorable court, so they may be inclined to strike down Nevada’s ban as well when it reaches them.
A recent poll showed majority support for the amendment to overturn the marriage equality far ahead of the 2016 election. Whether the courts strike the ban or voters invalidate it in 2016, things are progressing in Nevada.
Leave a Comment May 15, 2013
Resolution introduced in Nevada legislature to repeal marriage equality ban through a referendum in 2016
By Scottie Thomaston
Nevada state seal
A Democratic state senator in Nevada has introduced a resolution to repeal the state’s existing marriage equality ban through a ballot initiative. In order for the repeal amendment to be placed on the ballot, lawmakers must pass it this year and once more in 2015.
The ban passed in 2002 and is currently being challenged in federal court by LGBT legal group Lambda Legal. That case is styled as Sevcik v. Sandoval. A federal district court judge upheld the ban, and the plaintiffs appealed the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, where it is awaiting review. The Ninth Circuit had agreed to put the case on a parallel track with another case challenging Hawaii’s marriage equality ban.
LGBTQ Nation reports:
Now, more than ten years later, polls show sentiment in Nevada for same sex marriage has changed, with many voters supporting it. A February 2013 poll by the Retail Association of Nevada poll found that 54 percent of voters support marriage equality for gay couples.
They also report that once the amendment is repealed, the state would be free to pass marriage equality legislation.
Leave a Comment March 19, 2013
Nevada anti-gay marriage group files final reply brief at Supreme Court; case distributed for March 15 conference
By Scottie Thomaston
Beverly Sevcik and Mary Baranovich, the Sevcik plaintiffs
The final reply brief in Nevada’s marriage equality case (currently at the Supreme Court) has been filed there. The Coalition for the Protection of Marriage, the group who led the effort to pass Nevada’s anti-gay marriage initiative, had filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to take up the case before judgment at the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Although the state defendants are defending Nevada’s anti-gay amendment, they didn’t join the petition or file any responses at the Supreme Court.
Lambda Legal, representing the plaintiffs (same-sex couples), filed a brief in opposition arguing that the Coalition lacks standing to file the petition and that the case is much narrower than presented in the petition: the petition suggested that the Court could use the case to finally resolve the question of whether marriage equality is required in the United States.
In the Coalition’s reply, they reiterate their arguments: they claim to have standing and they claim that the plaintiffs are wrong to suggest their case narrowly applies only to states that allow gay and lesbian couples to have domestic partnerships but deny them the word “marriage”; they argue that distinction is not relevant.
First, on the word “marriage”:
The Opposition’s “narrow grounds” argument seems to have two facets: one, the domestic partnership legislation somehow effectively repudiates all the strong public interests advanced by the man-woman marriage laws, leaving thereafter those laws with an insufficiently strong basis in policy; and, two, because all the legislature or voters are doing with the man-woman marriage laws is withholding from same-sex couples the mere word marriage, the state cannot possibly have a good reason for such a course, and therefore all that is at work must be the kind of animus prohibited by Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996). Social institutional realities defeat both facets of the argument. Because social institutions are constituted by, and only by, complex webs of widely shared public meanings and are created by language acts, language creates the social reality that marriage unquestionably is. Marriage is an institution as fundamental, influential, and consequential as any. Accordingly, the political/legal power over the “mere word” marriage is a massive power.
In other words, they are arguing that regardless of the benefits gay and lesbian couples may or may not have, the word “marriage” is vitally important so there is political/legal power to regulate it (and allow it only for heterosexual couples.)
And second:
The other facet of the argument — for a society to recognize domestic partnerships somehow destroys its compelling interests in preserving man-woman marriage — is equally baseless. To create a domestic partnership arrangement while still preserving marriage’s man-woman meaning simultaneously supports same-sex couples and insures the law’s continuing support for the man-woman marriage institution — exactly for the purpose of preserving the valuable social goods it uniquely provides.
Ultimately, they suggest:
In light of these realities, a state’s adoption (or not) of a domestic partnership arrangement has no genuine constitutional significance.
They suggest that the case is really about the ultimate question of a marriage ban’s constitutionality, pointing to the plaintiffs’ arguments and cites to social science research on the ability of gays and lesbians to raise children and have families (showing that the interests advanced by opposite-sex marriage are the same as those that would be advanced by same-sex marriage.) And they characterize the plaintiffs arguments as saying that the domestic partnership law in Nevada “overrides” the constitution.
They write that the debate over same-sex marriage has been going on for over 20 years now so the Court should hear it.
On standing:
No standing or other justiciability issue hampers this case, either in general or in connection with the Petition. It is uncontested that this case contains parties on both sides with standing, and the parties are genuinely adverse and are litigating accordingly. The Opposition’s effort to cloud that reality should get no traction. The Coalition has its own Article III standing on four independent and individually adequate grounds.
Those are:
One, the Coalition has a real, concrete, and highly particularized reputational interest at stake here.
[...]
Two and three, as established in the District Court, see Dkt. No. 30 at 13−15, the Coalition has associational standing relative to its members’ particularized interests both in the perpetuation of the man-woman marriage institution and its unique social goods and in specific religious liberties put in genuine jeopardy by a move to a genderless marriage regime.
[...]
Four, as proponent of the Marriage Amendment, the Coalition under Nevada law stands in the same relationship to this case as the Petitioners in Perry under California law have in that case, with only the difference that some Nevada officials are actively opposing the plaintiffs’ claims.
In closing, here is what the Coalition is urging the Court to do:
The Court’s options are:
Hold the Petition pending resolution of Perry and/or Windsor; Grant the Petition and expedite briefing and argument (if there is to be any) so as to resolve this case this Term; Grant the Petition and set the case for argument next Term; or Deny the Petition, in which event this case will proceed in the Court of Appeals. The Coalition urges the second option.
The petition has been distributed for the March 15 conference. It seems more likely that it would be held and no action will be taken until after Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor are decided, though.
h/t Kathleen as usual for this filing
12-689 Coalition's Reply Brief by EqualityCaseFiles
Leave a Comment February 20, 2013
