When I was in high school, Catherine Lhamon was one of the lawyers at the ACLU of Southern California who helped me and a group of other kids sue the state of California for our right to a basic education in the case Williams v California. After a lot of ugly tussling with Gray Davis that hurt his popularity, we settled with Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2004. The Williams settlement helps guarantee every student's right to an equal education, and also forces the state to be accountable in providing all students the basic needs for their education, such as qualified teachers and books. I'm really proud of my involvement with Williams and loved working with Catherine on the lawsuit. As a kid I had always been politically aware, but Williams brought me into politics in a big way.
Catherine is now the Racial Justice Director at the ACLU, and today she gave a statement about Prop. 8 to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors that I think is worth a read. It gave me some insight into her life and work that I didn't know before. It's interesting to see what pushes people to spend their lives working toward social justice. And it looks like her statement helped convince the board to support a Prop. 8 lawsuit brought on by the city of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Santa Clara County. Go Catherine!
Good morning. I am Catherine Lhamon, Racial Justice Director of the ACLU of Southern California. I urge this board to file suit or join an existing suit to challenge the constitutionality of Proposition 8.
The very title of Proposition 8 states its constitutional defect. Its title is, “Eliminates the Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.” Proposition 8 takes away what our constitution guarantees as a fundamental right. It works a breathtaking diminution of the value of our constitution itself: by allowing voters to completely revise core constitutional principles, Proposition 8 sets a dangerous precedent that all our constitutional protections – the right to free speech, the right to equal protection of the law, and others – exist only for so long as majorities vote yes on them. If it stands, it will suggest that any fundamental rights can be revoked on a bare majority vote, regardless of what our constitution otherwise guarantees.
Our system of checks and balances does not give the voting majority the right to write out of the constitution those core principles enshrined in it. Our system of checks and balances is based on the principle that the constitution sets the baseline for all our most fundamental rights, and a simple majority of voters cannot take those away. Proposition 8 is unconstitutional and will be overturned in court; this county should be on the right side of history, saying that we will not be part of official discrimination.
As much as I am professionally interested, as Racial Justice Director of the ACLU of Southern California, in ensuring equal opportunity for all people, this issue is also deeply personal for me. My parents married in Washington, D.C., rather than in Virginia, where my mother was raised, because in 1966 Virginia still outlawed interracial marriage. My mother, who is black, could not at that time marry my father, who is white, in her home state. The United States Supreme Court outlawed race-based marriage restrictions the following year in Loving v. Virginia. I was raised in the shadow of Supreme Court decisions like Loving, and like Brown, that held that equal protection applies to all persons, and that promised a new day of meaningful opportunity for people like me. If an electorate can, through the tyranny of the majority vote, wipe away such fundamental constitutional protections as the right to equal protection for all persons, then we as a state are returning to the bad old days of institutionalized discrimination that I never thought I would see in my lifetime. I urge this board to do what is right and to work, through a lawsuit, to protect all Californians.
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