2003—By a vote of 4 to 3, the Massachusetts supreme court (in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health) imposes same-sex marriage on the benighted citizens of Massachusetts, as the court rules that a state statute defining marriage as the legal union of a man and a woman—a statutory definition that dates back to colonial times and that is derived from English common law—somehow violates the “individual liberty and equality safeguards” of the state constitution. The majority opinion by chief justice Margaret H. Marshall, wife of former New York Times columnist Anthony Lewis, is widely credited with helping to secure President George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004.
2021—A divided Ninth Circuit panel rules (in Perry v. Hollingsworth) that the proponents of California’s Proposition 8 on marriage did not have Article III standing to argue that the district court breached its binding obligations to them when it ordered public release of the video recordings of the 2010 trial against Proposition 8. In dissent, Judge Sandra Ikuta objects:
“This is yet another sad chapter in the story of how the judiciary has been willing to bend or break its own rules and standards in order to publicize the proceedings of a single high-profile trial. The urge to broadcast has continued despite the Supreme Court’s unprecedented intervention to prevent the district court and our court from violating rules precluding such a broadcast, and our subsequent intercession to prevent the district court from reneging on a judge’s “solemn commitments” not to do so. And here we are again: the majority bends the principles of Article III standing in order to deprive proponents of the opportunity to argue that the court should not breach its binding obligations.”