California's Governor Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown get to continue to do the right thing:
The outlook for the legal defense of Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, grew cloudier Thursday as a state appellate court refused to order Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown to appeal a federal judge's ruling overturning the measure.
The Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento dismissed without comment a lawsuit seeking to compel the state to come to the initiative's defense. The suit was filed Monday by the conservative Pacific Justice Institute on behalf of a Los Angeles-area minister.
Why does it matter so much? Because in his decision overturning Proposition 8, Judge Walker expressed a great deal of skepticism as to whether the Defendant-Intervenors have the standing required to defend Prop 8 before the Court of Appeals. The State of California obviously has standing to defends its own laws; but previous precedent dictates that merely supporting a ballot measure does not necessarily provide standing to defend it in court. So unless the State is forced to defend Prop 8, it's entirely possible that any appeal could be dead on arrival.
Two points of irony. First, it was a series of rulings from conservative courts that made standing so restrictive. Second, why does it seem like "states' rights" get thrown out the window every single time a state does something that a state's rights advocate doesn't like?