A Stinging Rebuke

Dressed up in muted legal language, the Supreme Court issued a stinging rebuke yesterday to District Court Judge Vaughn Walker and Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski for their recent shenanigans in the Proposition 8 trial in California.

Proposition 8 is the recent referendum amendment to the California Constitution passed by a solid majority establishing marriage solely as that between a man and a woman. Upon the filing of a lawsuit by gay rights advocates to overturn Proposition 8, Judges Walker and Kozinski began working desperately to change the Rules so that the trial proceedings could be televised.

In the first place, the Supremes agreed to review a motion by proponents of Proposition 8 for an extraordinary intervention to prevent the televising of the proceedings. It's hard enough to get a complaint before the Supreme Court in the first place, but to ask the Court to intervene in a controversy which had not gone through the regular appeals process is nigh on impossible.  In this case, the Court not only agreed to intervene, but issued its ruling in a stunning three days! In the second place, the Court ruled against the District Court on all counts, with not the barest hint that there was anything at all proper about the District Court's conduct. The Per Curiam opinion concluded:

The District Court attempted to change its rules at the eleventh hour to treat this case differently than other trials in the district. Not only did it ignore the federal statute that establishes the procedures by which its rules may be amended, its express purpose was to broadcast a high-profile trial that would include witness testimony about a contentious issue.

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There is hardly a rationale for what these California Judges tried to do, other than unseemly  hyper-partisanship against the proponents. Supporters of Proposition 8 have come under severe harassment from gay rights advocates since passage, including coordinated attempts to publicly smear individual Mormons for simply participating in the public process. The potential for witness intimidation if the trial was televised was palpable. And the manner and method these Judges chose to implement their scheme smelled of Judicial lawlessness running roughshod over the parties in this case. 

It seems doubtful that the Defendants in this case can expect a fair trial at the hands of such political hacks as these Judges appear to be. With this rebuke by the Supreme Court for their misbehavior, both of these Judges should do the right thing and recuse themselves from any further involvement in this case.