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Fightdirecto -> RE: Should Supreme Court Justice Thomas rule on cases involving black people? (6/15/2011 4:48:57 AM)
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http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/15/BA261JTP5D.DTL
quote:
A federal judge refused Tuesday to set aside a former colleague's ruling overturning California's ban on same-sex marriage and said the jurist's long-term relationship with another man was not a legitimate reason to accuse him of bias.
"It is not reasonable to presume that a judge is incapable of making an impartial decision about the constitutionality of a law solely because, as a citizen, the judge could be affected by the proceedings," Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware said in rejecting conflict-of-interest charges against his predecessor, Vaughn Walker.
Sponsors of Proposition 8, the November 2008 initiative barring gay and lesbian marriages, had asked Ware to nullify Walker's ruling in August against the measure and declare that he should not have heard the case.
They said his disclosure in April, six weeks after his retirement from the bench, of his 10-year same-sex relationship showed he had a stake in the outcome of the lawsuit challenging Prop. 8.
Although Walker has not said whether he and his partner intend to marry, Prop. 8's backers argued that his silence entitles the public to presume they were planning to wed when he presided over the trial in January 2010.
Ware, who heard arguments over Walker's role in San Francisco on Monday, disagreed. The fact that a judge is in a relationship, he said, doesn't necessarily mean he is "so interested in marrying the person that he would be unable to exhibit the impartiality which, it is presumed, all federal judges maintain."
A gay judge is entitled to rule in a gay-rights case, even if his decision could provide him "some speculative future benefit," Ware said.
He said disqualifying Walker because he is a member of a group potentially affected by his ruling would also require "recusal of minority judges in most, if not all, civil rights cases."
Besides, Ware said, the Prop. 8 case did not affect only a minority group.
"We all have an equal stake in a case that challenges the constitutionality of a restriction on a fundamental right," he said.
The judge also rejected arguments that Walker had been legally obliged to disclose his relationship before the trial. Courts have required judges to reveal close ties to people with a financial interest in a case, or to a lawyer for one of the parties, Ware said. But Walker had no duty to disclose "intimate, but irrelevant, details about his personal life."
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