I'm no constitutional law expert but wouldn't the potential California Court ruling violate the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution? Follow my thought process here: After watching the California Supreme Court proceedings regarding the validity of Prop 8 a week ago, most court watchers expect the Court to rule against overturning prop 8, but allow the marriages that ocurred before Nov. 4th to remain legal. My layman position here of course is that this is a clear violation of the 14th amendment.
The 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution says, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Now, I am fully aware that many advocates for marriage equality can and will argue that this amendment nullifies all existing state statutory laws and constitutional amendments banning gay marriage. These same advocates also say however, that they are waiting for the "right time" when more national consensus on this topic is reached before attempting to bring a marriage case to the federal courts. But this is not relevant to my question stated in my intro.
My specific question is if the California Supreme Court rules as expected, there will exist a clear discrimination between some same-sex couples already married in California and same-sex couples who can not marry. This is a special legal circumstance that has not occured anywhere else in the United States. With the exception of one gay couple married in Iowa, no state allows some gays to marry and others not. Consequently, if this situation occurs, and I hope it does not (I hope the Court does the right thing and overturns prop 8) then I believe that the gay "powers that be" will have a strong case to bring to the federal courts. The resulting case could not only overturn prop 8 in the federal courts, but could nullify all existing constitutional bans on gay marriage. What do you all think?