It’s fun to think of Ted Olson, Charles Cooper, Robert Tyler and Therese Stewart spending the weekend standing in front of their bedroom mirrors, nervously rehearsing for Monday’s oral arguments in the Prop 8 appeal.
Cooper will kick things off with 15 minutes on why the backers of the constitutional amendment have standing to appeal.
Then the mic goes to Tyler, general counsel of the for Advocates for Faith & Freedom, an Irvine group representing the Imperial County intervenors.
Olson then has 30 minutes to make his case that neither the proponents of the ban nor Imperial County has standing. The proponents themselves don’t contend they would personally suffer an injury if gays and lesbians were permitted to marry, Olson argues.
In the second hour, addressing the merits, Cooper will get 30 minutes, followed by 25 minutes for Olson. The final five minutes will belong to Stewart, from the San Francisco city attorney's office, who will argue Prop 8 serves no state interest other than to “demean” gay and lesbian relationships and classify them “unequal to everyone else.”
The attorneys will be making their cases to Judges Stephen Reinhardt, Michael Daly Hawkins and N. Randy Smith, prompting some predictions of a 2-1 ruling in favor of gay marriage, and other speculation that the ideologically diverse panel could come together in agreeing the anti-gay marriage forces lack standing.
The Recorder has a seat for the show, but you can catch it on C-SPAN.
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