[Ed. Note: FDL continues its team coverage of Perry v. Schwarzenegger–including more legal analysis, court documents, videos, and liveblogging direct from the federal court in San Francisco. You can find it all on our dedicated Prop 8 page.]
Good morning! We are in Judge Vaughn Walker’s San Francisco courtroom again this morning; today at 10am Judge Walker will hear an appeal of Magistrate Judge Spero’s order regarding disclosure of materials from anti-Prop 8 groups, specifically Equality California (EQCA) executive director Geoff Kors.
First thing this morning (9:30am pacific time) Judge Walker is dealing with an unrelated criminal matter. I’ll begin liveblogging the Perry v Schwarzenegger appeal hearing as soon as it begins.
Criminal matter running a little long; as of 10:10 Judge Walker is still hearing the criminal matter.
10:25 criminal matter concluded; court taking break now.
12:20PM: Hearing concluded.
Lots of so-so lawyering from ACLU and EQCA as well as some crisp responses from Desseau (Plaintiffs take no position on the order to compel disclosure) and the P-I attorney. A number of good questions from Judge Walker, specifically with regard to the where the “clear error” of the magistrate’s order is. I’m not sure either ACLU or eQCA attorneys showed any error at all, although they argued the merits a lot.
Plaintiff-Intervenor thinks since they had to provide docs, so should these parties, although they are “syympathetic” to the first amendment arguments, having made and lost them with regard to their own doc production.
Finally, the ACLU attorney tried to get some more words in edgewise at the end, to very little sympathy from Judge Walker. At the end of this attempt, the ACLU attorney agreed with Dousseau that this would endanger the wonderful, awesome schedule Judge Walker kept for the entire trial, since this magistrate’s order would certainly be appealed to the full Ninth Circuit.
Judge Walker did not appear to be pleased to be reminded of the several times the Ninth Circuit has overruled his orders in this case, and said “Thank you” and left the bench.
Shortly thereafter, the Clerk announced that Court was in recess. Chatting with lawyers afterwards, no one seems to think today’s activity made a verdict appear any sooner, although there was some discussion that we could get one or two weeks advance notice of a date for closing arguments.
Stay tuned!
Tags: California, civil rights, EQCA, Gay rights, Jeff Kors, liveblog, Marriage Equality, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, prop 8, Vaughn Walker
