By Lisa Keen
The U.S. Supreme Court Tuesday refused to hear the appeal of a group of clergy in Washington, D.C. who want to put the city's new marriage equality law on the ballot.
The denial of review appears to the end of the line now for opponents of equal marriage rights in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., enacted its marriage equality law in March of last year, but not before a group of clergy tried to stop the law from going into effect by requesting an emergency order from the U.S. Supreme Court. The high court refused that request, in Jackson v. D.C., but the group came back with this second effort aimed at undoing the marriage equality law.
What the group sought, in Jackson v. D.C. II, was a ruling from the high court saying the D.C. government could not bar an initiative regarding whether to repeal the marriage equality law.
The question before the Supreme Court, however, was not about marriage on the surface. On the surface, the question was whether the city's law governing initiatives can bar voters from considering an initiative that violates the city's human rights act.
Important to the case was the fact that Washington, D.C., is not a state but a unique District, controlled by the Congress to serve as the nation's center of government. But in recognition of the needs of citizens who reside in the District of Columbia and who raise and school children there and require routine services such as fire and police protection, Congress, in 1973, provided for the formation of a D.C. Council to govern its citizens under a "Home Rule Act," or D.C. Charter.
Congress also approved an amendment to the Charter, in 1978, that incorporated the D.C. Council's laws spelling out how it would govern its own elections, including initiatives. The following year, the D.C. Council then approved the legislation necessary to implement that Charter amendment. And there lies the rub.
The implementing law -the Initiative Procedures Act– stipulated that the Elections Board "shall refuse to accept (a proposed initiative) if the Board finds that it . . . authorizes, or would have the effect of authorizing, discrimination" prohibited under the city human rights law.
The D.C. Human Rights Law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation, so when the group of clergy sought a ballot measure to overturn its marriage equality law, the city Board of Election refused to accept the measure, and the city's highest court, the D.C. Court of Appeals, upheld that decision.
(c) 2011 by Keen News Service. All rights reserved.
