Today, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit lifted its stay of the historic Federal District Court decision that found Proposition 8 unconstitutional. With marriage equality now restored in California, the Plaintiffs who successfully challenged California’s Proposition 8 in Hollingsworth v. Perry were married.
Plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Stier of Berkeley, California were married at City Hall in San Francisco. They were the first gay or lesbian couple to be married in California post-Proposition 8. California Attorney General Kamala Harris officiated. Perry and Stier’s son Elliott Perry served as a witness.
Plaintiffs Paul Katami and Jeff Zarrillo of Burbank, California will be married at City Hall in Los Angeles. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa will officiate. Katami and Zarrillo’s best friends, Scott Jones and Devin Swanson of South Pasadena, California, will serve as witnesses.
The weddings will take place two days after the United States Supreme Court issued a decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry that restores marriage equality to California.
Hollingsworth v. Perry, the landmark federal constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8, is the first case involving the fundamental right of gay and lesbian Americans to marry to ever be fully briefed and argued before the Supreme Court. The American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER) is the sole sponsor of Hollingsworth v. Perry. AFER’s co-founder is Chad Griffin, current President of the Human Rights Campaign.
“After four and a half long and painful years, justice for committed gay and lesbian couples has finally been delivered,” Griffin said in a statement. “In California, a time of struggle and indignity are over, and love, justice and freedom begin anew. And now, no election, no judge – no one – can take this basic right away. At long last, marriage has finally returned to the most populous state in the nation.”
