Judge Doubts Gay Marriage Ban’s Backers Can Appeal

Didn’t Judge Walker Already Rule That The Prop 8 Supporters Have Standing?

No. Judge Walker decided that the Prop 8 Backers could intervene, not that they have Article III standing. To intervene in a case, a party does not need to show that they have standing. That’s because a “case or controversy” already exists. (The Plaintiffs had standing to bring the case because they were being denied their constitutional right to get married.) Since both the Plaintiffs and the Defendants already had standing, the Court had jurisdication over the “case.” From there, deciding that the Prop 8 supporters could intervene in the case was an easy call. The law of the Ninth Circuit holds that a “public interest group may have a protectable interest in defending the legality of a measure it had supported.”

But this does not mean that it has standing. To the contrary, on several occasions the Supreme Court has recognized that a party who was allowed to intervene in litigation does not necessarily have standing. For example, the Supreme Court said:

"If the original party on whose side a party intervened drops out of the litigation, the intervenor will then have to establish its own standing to continue pursuing litigation. (Diamond v. Charles, 476 U.S. 54, 64, (1986))

Focus on the Family vastly outpaced Mormon spending on Proposition 8

Ministry, related donors spent $1.25 million on anti-gay marriage measure
Digg Tweet By Ernest Luning 2/11/09 7:37 AM

Altogether, donations supporting Proposition 8 from Focus on the Family, one of its major benefactors and an offshoot lobbying organization totaled more than $1.251 million — just shy of the $1.275 million contributed by ProtectMarriage.com’s largest donor, the Knights of Columbus, the Connecticut-based political arm of the Catholic Church. In addition to $727,250 reported by Focus on the Family, major backer and board member Elsa Prince, the billionaire heiress of Holland, Mich., donated $450,000 to ProtectMarriage.com in two cash chunks and the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council, a Christian-right lobbying organization spun off from Focus on the Family and founded in part by Prince’s foundation, chipped in $74,400.

http://coloradoindependent.com/21271/focus-on-the-family-vastly-outpaced-mormon-spending-on-proposition-8

Mormon church reports spending $180,000 on Proposition 8
L.A. NOW
LA Times | January 30, 2009 | 5:51 pm

Top officials with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints filed reports today indicating that they donated more than $180,000 in in-kind contributions to Proposition 8, the November ballot initiative that banned same-sex marriage in California.

The contributions included tens of thousands of dollars for expenses such as airline tickets, hotel and restaurant bills and car-rental bills for top church officials such as L. Whitney Clayton, along with $96,849.31 worth of “compensated staff time” for church employees.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/01/top-officials-w.html