Federal Judge in Gay Marriage Case Described as Unpredictable
The San Francisco federal judge presiding in a suit that challenges California’s ban on gay marriage has a libertarian streak that has dismayed some conservatives.
The Wall Street Journal describes U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker as “quirky” and offers the evidence. In 1994, Walker came out in favor of decriminalizing drugs. In 2003 he ordered a mail thief to wear a sign that confessed, “I have stolen mail. This is my punishment.” He once tried to give lead counsel status in a class action to the lawyer charging the lowest fees, a decision that didn’t survive appeal. He also was slow to dismiss lawsuits over government wiretaps.
Law professor Rory Little of the University of California’s Hastings College of the Law told the Wall Street Journal that Walker, 65, has been “unpredictable, both politically and judicially” since he was appointed to a judgeship in 1989 after being nominated by President Ronald Reagan.
In the gay-marriage case, Walker has allowed gay couples to testify on the meaning of marriage and how supporters of the marriage ban feel about gay people. He also planned to allow broadcast of the trial, in real time at federal courthouses and in delayed form on YouTube.
So far, that hasn’t happened. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals approved the courthouse broadcast and was mulling the idea of an Internet broadcast, but the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily put the kibosh on the idea when it issued a stay Monday.
Little said the judge’s decisions allowing so much evidence in the gay-marriage bench trial will create “as big a factual record as possible”—and that could help the court’s decision stand on appeal.
