Bernard Vincent Ward is an American former radio personality whose career ran from 1985 to 2007. Formerly a radio talk show host with KGO 810 AM in San Francisco, California, Ward, once billed by KGO as "The Lion of the Left" and "unabashedly liberal," was the host of the daily news talk program, The Bernie Ward Show, and the three-hour program, GodTalk, on Sunday mornings.
Same-sex marriage has been legal in California since June 28, 2013. The State of California first issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples from June 16, 2008 to November 5, 2008, a period of approximately 4 months, 2 weeks and 6 days, as a result of the Supreme Court of California finding in the case of In re Marriage Cases that barring same-sex couples from marriage violated the Constitution of California. The issuance of such licenses was halted from November 5, 2008 through June 27, 2013 due to the passage of Proposition 8—a state constitutional amendment barring same-sex marriages. The granting of same-sex marriages recommenced following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry, which restored the effect of a federal district court ruling that overturned Proposition 8 as unconstitutional.
Terence Hallinan was an American attorney and politician from San Francisco, California. He was the second of six sons born to Progressive Party presidential candidate Vincent Hallinan and his wife, Vivian (Moore) Hallinan. Hallinan was educated at the London School of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Hastings College of the Law. He practiced privately in San Francisco.
Carol Ann Corrigan is an associate justice of the California Supreme Court. She is a former prosecutor.
Raymond Kwok-Cheung Chow, nicknamed "Shrimp Boy", is a Hong Kong-born felon with ties to a San Francisco Chinatown street gang and an organized crime syndicate, including the American branch of the Hong Kong-based triad Wo Hop To and the Hop Sing Boys.
In re Marriage Cases, 43 Cal. 4th 757 was a California Supreme Court case where the court held that laws treating classes of persons differently based on sexual orientation should be subject to strict judicial scrutiny, and that an existing statute and initiative measure limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples violate the rights of same-sex couples under the California Constitution and may not be used to preclude them from marrying.
Proposition 8, known informally as Prop 8, was a California ballot proposition and a state constitutional amendment intended to ban same-sex marriage; it passed in the November 2008 California state elections and was later overturned in court. The proposition was created by opponents of same-sex marriage in advance of the California Supreme Court's May 2008 appeal ruling, In re Marriage Cases, which followed the short-lived 2004 same-sex weddings controversy and found the previous ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional. Proposition 8 was ultimately ruled unconstitutional by a federal court in 2010, although the court decision did not go into effect until June 26, 2013, following the conclusion of proponents' appeals.
Strauss v. Horton, 46 Cal. 4th 364, 93 Cal. Rptr. 3d 591, 207 P.3d 48 (2009), was a decision of the Supreme Court of California, the state's highest court. It resulted from lawsuits that challenged the voters' adoption of Proposition 8 on November 4, 2008, which amended the Constitution of California to outlaw same-sex marriage. Several gay couples and governmental entities filed the lawsuits in California state trial courts. The Supreme Court of California agreed to hear appeals in three of the cases and consolidated them so they would be considered and decided. The supreme court heard oral argument in the cases in San Francisco on March 5, 2009. Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar stated that the cases will set precedent in California because "no previous case had presented the question of whether [a ballot] initiative could be used to take away fundamental rights".
Vaughn Richard Walker, Judge Vaughn R Walker, is an American lawyer who served as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California from 1989 to 2011. Walker presided over the original trial in Hollingsworth v. Perry, where he found California's Proposition 8 to be unconstitutional.
Charles Roberts Breyer is an American lawyer serving as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Breyer served as chairman of the United States Sentencing Commission from 2018 to 2022.
Jeremy Don Fogel is a former United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. Fogel was appointed by President Bill Clinton. He was a judge for the municipal court and superior court of Santa Clara County, California from 1981 to 1998. He served as Director of the Federal Judicial Center from 2011 to 2018.
Nordyke v. King was a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in which a ban of firearms on all public property and whether the Second Amendment should be applied to the state and local governments is to be decided. After several hearings at different levels of the federal court system, Alameda County, California promised that gun shows could be held on county property, essentially repudiating its ordinance.
Hollingsworth v. Perry was a series of United States federal court cases that re-legalized same-sex marriage in the state of California. The case began in 2009 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, which found that banning same-sex marriage violates equal protection under the law. This decision overturned California ballot initiative Proposition 8, which had banned same-sex marriage. After the State of California refused to defend Proposition 8, the official sponsors of Proposition 8 intervened and appealed to the Supreme Court. The case was litigated during the governorships of both Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown, and was thus known as Perry v. Schwarzenegger and Perry v. Brown, respectively. As Hollingsworth v. Perry, it eventually reached the United States Supreme Court, which held that, in line with prior precedent, the official sponsors of a ballot initiative measure did not have Article III standing to appeal an adverse federal court ruling when the state refused to do so.
Coleman v. Schwarzenegger, docket no. 2:90-cv-00520-LKK-JFM, is a federal class action civil rights lawsuit under the Civil Rights Act of 1871, Eighth and Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 alleging unconstitutional mental health care by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR).
Edward Milton Chen is a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California and former United States magistrate judge of the same court.
Albert Greenwood Brown Jr. is an American murderer and rapist who has been convicted of sexual molestation with force of a minor, two counts of first-degree rape with force, and the first degree murder of a teen girl in Riverside, California.
ProtectMarriage.com was a collection of conservative and religious American political activist groups aligned in opposition to same-sex marriage. The coalition's stated goal is to "defend and restore the definition of marriage as between a man and a woman." Beginning in 2001 as Proposition 22 Legal Defense and Education Fund holding the domain name protectmarriage.com, the organization reformed in 2005 as a coalition to sponsor California Proposition 8, called the California Marriage Protection Act, and was successful in placing it on the ballot in 2008. Proposition 8 amended the California Constitution, putting a halt to same-sex marriages in California for nearly two years until the proposition was overturned as unconstitutional. While it was in effect, ProtectMarriage.com defended the amendment in a series of legal challenges. Ron Prentice is the executive director.
The Pacific Justice Institute (PJI) is a conservative legal defense organization based in California. The group, founded by attorney Brad W. Dacus, describes itself as focusing on representation relating to "...religious freedom, parental rights, and other civil liberties." PJI was declared an anti-LGBT hate group in 2014 by the Southern Poverty Law Center due to the group's long history of anti-LGBT rhetoric through its founder. The group also represents workers opposed to their employers' vaccine mandates.
William Horsley Orrick III is an American lawyer who serves as a senior United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. He had a long career as a lawyer in private practice in San Francisco, and served as a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice during the Obama administration.
SaveCalifornia.com is an American conservative activist group founded in 1999 by Randy Thomasson as part of Campaign for Children and Families (CCF). The organization is active in influencing public policy on various social issues, and has opposed California's FAIR Education Act.
