Proposition 8 still unfair, judges say

Proposition 8 is still unconstitutional, says the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A three-judge panel on February 7 declared, “Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California.”

The ruling upholds a 2010 ruling by federal Judge Vaughn Walker.

The Ninth Circuit court didn’t consider whether gays and lesbians have a right to marry like straight couples. Instead, it found that Prop. 8 took away a right to marry that had already been recognized by the California Supreme Court.

But the court left in place the current restriction on gay marriage, pending further appeals. Backers of the measure will likely appeal to the entire panel of the Ninth Circuit to reverse the decision. And the law may ultimately wind its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s a somewhat scary prospect for marriage-equality backers, says Sam Catalano, acting president of the Stonewall Democratic Club of Greater Sacramento. “That means our lives and our families are in the hands of Justice [Anthony] Kennedy.” (Cosmo Garvin)

The effort to ban labor pacts on big public-works projects came up surprisingly short last week.

Nonunion construction companies and contractors cooked up a proposed ballot measure to end project-labor agreements, which impose wage and benefits requirements and which they say make it harder for nonunion outfits to win big public contracts.

The companies hired professional signature gatherers to help qualify their initiative for the June ballot in Sacramento. But the Sacramento County Registrar of Voters say they came up short.

One of the measure’s proponents told The Sacramento Bee that the shortfall was due to “a concerted union effort to harass and intimidate signature gatherers and citizens.”

SN&R did observe union and democratic activists discouraging voters from singing the anti-PLA petitions.

But at the time, signature gatherers told SN&R that the pro-union picketers were having absolutely no effect on their ability to sign up voters.

And in fact, the group turned in far more signatures than they needed: 46,692 were submitted, just 32,207 valid signatures were required to qualify.

But an unusual number of the signatures turned out to be no good. The county registrar said that from a 1,400 signature sample only 62.4 percent were valid. Nearly 19 percent of the signatures turned in were from people not registered to vote, 7.5 percent of those signatures lived outside the city, and 7.3 percent were registered at the wrong address.

“It was a complete failure, it wasn’t even close,” said Kevin Dayton, with the Associated Builders and Contractors of California, one of the groups supporting the measure. Dayton said that “the union harassment didn’t help,” but said the numbers suggested something else was going on. “We just need more information to get the whole picture.” (C.G.)