Prop. 8: Hearing set on videotape issue (UPDATE)
on Apr 28, 2011 at 9:36 pm
UPDATE Thursday p.m. U.S. District Judge James Ware has scheduled a hearing for June 13 on the Proposition 8 backers’ plea to permanently block any public release of the videotape of the trial on the measure’s constitutionality. In an order Thursday, the judge said he would hold off for now on the Proposition 8 challengers’ conflicting plea to publicly release the entire video recording.
The Ninth Circuit Court declined on Wednesday to rule on public access to the videotape recording of the federal trial on the constitutionality of California’s ban on same-sex marriage, deciding that the issue should go first to a federal District judge in San Francisco. The proponents of that ban, known as Proposition 8, had asked the Circuit Court to permanently seal the videotape, so that it would not be publicly broadcast anywhere. But the challengers to the ban countered with a plea to have the full recording opened to the public. A media coalition also asked for access to the video.
Opting to act on neither request, the three-judge Circuit Court panel said that this controversy is not a part of the appeal now pending in that Court — an appeal seeking to overturn the District Court ruling last August that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional. Rather, the panel said, this dispute is related to a protective order issued during the trial by the trial judge in District Court, putting the video recording under seal, and that order is not being reviewed in the Circuit Court. So, the panel sent the filings to Chief Judge James Ware in District Court, who has taken over any remaining activity in the District Court now that the trial judge, District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, has fully retired and left the bench.
The issue of sealing or opening the videotape arose after the Proposition 8 backers accused Judge Walker of violating the sealing order, as well as a Supreme Court order not to broadcast the trial as it occurred, and asked the Circuit Court to order Walker and the lawyers for the challengers to Proposition 8 to return all copies of the recording to the court, and to order that they not be further disseminated in any way.
Meanwhile, Judge Ware has been drawn into an even more recent controversy: a plea by the Proposition 8 backers that he throw out all of Judge Walker’s ruling in the case, and any orders he had issued, claiming that his own same-sex relationship made him not an impartial judge in the case. Judge Ware has scheduled a hearing on that issue, for June 13; in the meantime, the judge asked both sides to file written arguments on where the case stands at this point, and how he should handle the new challenge to the ruling against the marriage ban.
