Judge Ware Denies Motion to Vacate Prop 8 Trial

Judge Ware Denies Motion to Vacate Prop 8 Trial
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This just in: Judge James Ware, acting very quickly after oral argument yesterday, has just issued a thoughtful opinion denying the ludicrous and offensive motion made by the Perry defendants that the trial opinion in the case be thrown out on account of the purported bias of the trial judge, Vaughn Walker (now retired). The bias, they argued, stemmed from the fact that Walker is gay and was in a relationship at the time of the trial, thus giving him a stake in the outcome of the trial. Among the incredible claims the Prop 8 defenders made at oral argument yesterday was that Judge Walker must have wanted to marry given the length of his relationship.

Judge Walker, to his credit, bought none of it. Among the highlights in the opinion is the analogy to cases where parties have unsuccessfully claimed that the race or sex of a judge somehow rendered him or her impartial: "It would not be reasonable to regard a fact as bringing a judge's impartiality into question if doing so would institute a 'double standard for minority judges' whereby the fact that a judge is gay, or black, or female would 'raise doubts about [that judge's] impartiality.""

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