California’s attorney general, former Governor Jerry Brown, said on Friday “that the measure was constitutionally indefensible and should be overturned.” He continued: “Proposition 8 must be invalidated because the amendment process cannot be used to extinguish fundamental constitutional rights without compelling justification.” According to the New York Times, “opponents have argued that the proposition fundamentally altered the state Constitution by taking away the right to marry from same-sex couples, who had been free to do so since May, when the California Supreme Court legalized such marriages. Proposition 8 overturned that decision by defining marriage in California as between only men and women …. Supporters of Proposition 8 asked the court in a separate legal brief filed Friday to invalidate the approximately 18,000 same-sex marriages performed before the ban was passed.”

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