Dennis Hollingsworth v. Kristin M. Perry

Notable Items:

Petitioner's Claim(s):

Issues:

Holding(s) and Disposition:

Material Facts:

• In 2008, the California Supreme Court held that limiting the official designation of marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.
• Respondents, two same-sex couples who wish to marry, filed suit in federal court, challenging Proposition 8 under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.
• Those officials [California’s Governor, attorney general, etc.] refused to defend the law, although they have continued to enforce it throughout this litigation.
• The District Court allowed petitioners to intervene to defend it.
• A full recounting of the facts is available below

Procedural History:

• Respondents, two same-sex couples who wish to marry, filed suit in federal court, challenging Proposition 8 under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.
• Those officials [California’s Governor, attorney general, etc.] refused to defend the law, although they have continued to enforce it throughout this litigation.
• The District Court allowed petitioners to intervene to defend it.
• ... the District Court declared Proposition 8 uncon-stitutional, permanently enjoining the California officials named as defendants from enforcing the law ....
• Those officials elected not to appeal the District Court order.
• the Ninth Circuit asked ... the California Supreme Court ... proponents of an initiative measure possess either a particularized interest ... or authority ... to defend the constitutionality of the initiative ....
• The California Supreme Court ... answered in the affirmative.
• Relying on that answer, the Ninth Circuit concluded that petitioners had standing under federal law to defend the constitutionality of Proposition 8.
• On the merits, the Ninth Circuit affirmed the District Court. The court held the Proposition unconstitutional under the rationale of our decision in Romer v. Evans, 517 U. S. 620 (1996)
• We granted certiorari to review that determination, and directed that the parties also brief and argue “Whether petitioners have standing under Article III, §2, of the Constitution in this case.”

Rationale

Roberts Majority Opinion (Scalia, Ginsburg, Breyer, Kagan)

• ... for a federal court to have authority under the Constitution to settle a dispute, the party before it must seek a remedy for a personal and tangible harm.
• To have standing, a litigant must seek relief for an injury that affects him in a “personal and individual way.” Defenders of Wildlife supra
• [Petitioners] have no “personal stake” in defending its enforcement that is distinguishable from the general interest of every citizen of California. Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 560–561.
• More to the point, the most basic features of an agency relationship are missing here.
• ... petitioners have not satisfied their burden to demonstrate standing to appeal the judgment of the District Court, the Ninth Circuit was without jurisdiction to consider the appeal.
• A full description of the rationale is available below

Kennedy dissent (Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor)

• The state-law question is how California defines and elaborates the status and authority of an initiative’s proponents who seek to intervene in court to defend the initiative after its adoption by the electorate.
• Under California law, a proponent has the authority to appear in court and assert the State’s interest in defending an enacted initiative when the public officials charged with that duty refuse to do so.
• But the State Supreme Court’s definition of proponents’ powers is binding on this Court. And that definition is fully sufficient to establish the standing and adversity that are requisites for justiciability under Article III of the United States Constitution.
• As the Court explains, the State of California sustained a concrete injury, sufficient to satisfy the requirements of Article III, when a United States District Court nullified a portion of its State Constitution.
• California finds it necessary to vest the responsibility and right to defend a voter-approved initiative in the initiative’s proponents when the State Executive declines to do so.
• Contrary to the Court’s suggestion, this Court’s precedents do not indicate that a formal agency relationship is necessary.
• A prime purpose of justiciability is to ensure vigorous advocacy, yet the Court insists upon litigation conducted by state officials whose preference is to lose the case.
• The Court today frustrates that choice by nullifying, for failure to comply with the Restatement of Agency, a State Supreme Court decision holding that state law authorizes an enacted initiative’s proponents to defend the law if and when the State’s usual legal advocates decline to do so.
• A full description of the rationale is available below

Full Recounting of Facts

• In 2008, the California Supreme Court held that limiting the official designation of marriage to opposite-sex couples violated the equal protection clause of the California Constitution.
• Later that year, California voters passed the ballot initiative at the center of this dispute, known as Proposition 8.
• That proposition amended the California Constitution to provide that “[o]nly marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.”
• Under California law, same-sex couples have a right to enter into relationships recognized by the State as “domestic partnerships,” which carry “the same rights, protections, and benefits, and shall be subject to the same responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law . . . as are granted to and imposed upon spouses.”
• ... the California Constitution further guarantees same-sex couples “all of the constitutionally based incidents of marriage,” including the right to have that marriage “officially recognized” as such by the State.
• Proposition 8 ... left those rights largely undisturbed, reserving only “the official designation of the term ‘marriage’ for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law.”
• Respondents, two same-sex couples who wish to marry, filed suit in federal court, challenging Proposition 8 under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Federal Constitution.
• A list of the material facts is available above

Majority Full Argument

• Article III of the Constitution confines the judicial power of federal courts to deciding actual “Cases” or “Controversies.” §2.
• ... for a federal court to have authority under the Constitution to settle a dispute, the party before it must seek a remedy for a personal and tangible harm.
• The doctrine of standing, we recently explained, “serves to prevent the judicial process from being used to usurp the powers of the political branches.” Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l USA
• Article III demands that an “actual controversy” persist throughout all stages of litigation. Already, LLC v. Nike, Inc.,
• But the District Court had not ordered them [the petitioners] to do or refrain from doing anything.
• To have standing, a litigant must seek relief for an injury that affects him in a “personal and individual way.” Defenders of Wildlife supra
• ... petitioners had no “direct stake” in the outcome of their appeal.
• We have repeatedly held that such a “generalized grievance,” no matter how sincere, is insufficient to confer standing. Defenders of Wildlife supra at 573–574
• [Petitioners] have no “personal stake” in defending its enforcement that is distinguishable from the general interest of every citizen of California. Defenders of Wildlife, supra, at 560–561.
• Without a judicially cognizable interest of their own, petitioners attempt to invoke that of someone else.
• ... a litigant must assert his or her own legal rights and interests, and cannot rest a claim to relief on the legal rights or inter-ests of third parties.” Powers v. Ohio, 499 U. S. 400, 410 (1991) .
• As petitioners put it, they “need no more show a personal injury, separate from the State’s indisputable interest in the validity of its law, than would California’s Attorney General or did the legislative leaders held to have standing in Karcher v. May, 484 U. S. 72 (1987) .”
• ... Karcher is compelling precedent against it. The legislators in that case intervened in their official capacities as Speaker [of the General Assembly Karcher] and President of the [Senate Orehio].
• Karcher and Orechio were permitted to proceed only because they were state officers, acting in an official capacity.
• All that the California Supreme Court decision stands for is that, so far as California is concerned, petitioners may argue in defense of Proposition 8.
• This “does not mean that the proponents become de facto public officials” ....
• More to the point, the most basic features of an agency relationship are missing here.
• Agency requires more than mere authorization to assert a particular interest. “An essential element of agency is the principal’s right to control the agent’s actions.”
• Neither the California Supreme Court nor the Ninth Circuit ever described the proponents as agents of the State, and they plainly do not qualify as such.
• ... petitioners have not satisfied their burden to demonstrate standing to appeal the judgment of the District Court, the Ninth Circuit was without jurisdiction to consider the appeal.
• The judgment of the Ninth Circuit is vacated, and the case is remanded with instructions to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.
• The core of the rationale is available above

Kennedy dissent (Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor)

• The state-law question is how California defines and elaborates the status and authority of an initiative’s proponents who seek to intervene in court to defend the initiative after its adoption by the electorate.
• Under California law, a proponent has the authority to appear in court and assert the State’s interest in defending an enacted initiative when the public officials charged with that duty refuse to do so.
• The State deems such an appearance essential to the integrity of its initiative process.
• Yet the Court today concludes that this state-defined status and this state-conferred right fall short of meeting federal requirements because the proponents cannot point to a formal delegation of authority that tracks the requirements of the Restatement of Agency.
• But the State Supreme Court’s definition of proponents’ powers is binding on this Court.
• And that definition is fully sufficient to establish the standing and adversity that are requisites for justiciability under Article III of the United States Constitution.
• As the Court explains, the State of California sustained a concrete injury, sufficient to satisfy the requirements of Article III, when a United States District Court nullified a portion of its State Constitution.
• There is no basis for this Court to set aside the California Supreme Court’s determination of state law.
• The Court concludes that proponents lack sufficient ties to the state government. It notes that they “are not elected,” “answer to no one,” and lack “‘a fiduciary obligation’” to the State.
• The California Supreme Court has determined that this purpose [of the initiative system] is undermined if the very officials the initiative process seeks to circumvent are the only parties who can defend an enacted initiative when it is challenged in a legal proceeding.
• California finds it necessary to vest the responsibility and right to defend a voter-approved initiative in the initiative’s proponents when the State Executive declines to do so.
• Contrary to the Court’s suggestion, this Court’s precedents do not indicate that a formal agency relationship is necessary. And, although the Court dismisses the proponents’ standing claim because initiative proponents “are not elected” and “decide for themselves, with no review, what arguments to make and how to make them” in defense of the enacted initiative, ante, at 15, those same charges could be leveled with equal if not greater force at the special prosecutors just discussed.
• A prime purpose of justiciability is to ensure vigorous advocacy, yet the Court insists upon litigation conducted by state officials whose preference is to lose the case.
• The Court today frustrates that choice by nullifying, for failure to comply with the Restatement of Agency, a State Supreme Court decision holding that state law authorizes an enacted initiative’s proponents to defend the law if and when the State’s usual legal advocates decline to do so.
• A full description of the rationale is available above

© Jonathan M. Bresler