Gay-marriage ruling: How strong a case?

SAN FRANCISCO - The judge who overturned California's same-sex marriage ban was unrelenting in his repudiation of the measure, saying such laws were mean-spirited and unconstitutional to the core.

It was a harsh yet carefully worded ruling that some experts said would be tough to overturn as the landmark legal debate goes to the appeals court and then possibly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Others say the power of conservative judges on those courts could be enough to thwart same-sex marriage and stop the movement in its tracks.

Sure to be at the center of the debate is whether California's Proposition 8 violates the 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protections for all and declares that government won't take away "life, liberty or property" without due process.

U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said on several occasions in his ruling that he believes gay-marriage bans clearly deprive people of those rights.

"The evidence at trial regarding the campaign to pass Proposition 8 uncloaks the most likely explanation for its passage: a desire to advance the belief that opposite-sex couples are morally superior to same-sex couples," he said.

Walker's ruling offers a preview of arguments that will play out on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit - the nation's largest and most unpredictable federal appeals court.

A randomly selected three-judge panel of the court will consider the case next. The Ninth Circuit is viewed as a liberal court, but its sheer size of 27 active judges and the many cutting-edge legal issues it receives from Western states leave it with an inconsistent track record.

And there's no disputing that the court has some hot-button social issues in front of it right now. Just last week, the Arizona immigration law landed at the court.

The court is routinely rebuffed by the Supreme Court and federal lawmakers for striking down the Pledge of Allegiance, upholding California's medical-marijuana law, and other decisions viewed as resting outside the mainstream.

Legal experts such as Stanford University law professor Michael Wald said that Walker's opinion was strongly worded, well-reasoned, and could be difficult to overturn.

Wald said it's significant that Walker made a voluminous "findings of fact" that showed Proposition 8 was unconstitutional. The "findings of fact" phrasing is important because appeals courts have to pay deference to those conclusions - essentially they have to assume that the findings are true.

"Walker held that there is one fundamental right to marry and excluding gays from enjoying that right is unconstitutional," Wald said.

Still, others weren't so sanguine about the fate of gay marriage before the Ninth Circuit.

They said the political makeup of the three-judge panel would make all the difference, playing even a bigger role than Walker's opinion in shaping the future of gay marriage.

Legal experts said the case could easily end with a politically conservative panel of the Ninth Circuit reinstating the marriage ban and the U.S. Supreme Court refusing to get involved.

Even though the court is known as a liberal one, the judges on the court represent every conceivable point along the political spectrum. Its judges are drawn from the nine Western states where its decisions are law.

"Everything depends on which Ninth Circuit judges get picked randomly to sit on the case," said Vikram Amar, a University of California, Davis law professor.

Amar said that the nationwide debate over gay marriage showed just how unsettled the issue was and that conservative judges hew closer to keeping the status quo than taking large leaps to rule in favor of social change. He noted that 44 states don't allow gay marriages.

Walker has agreed to block gay marriages until at least Friday so he can consider arguments on whether to keep the ban in effect while the case is appealed.