If you have an interest in the ongoing federal trial in California on the legality of Proposition 8 — the ballot proposition that prohibited same-sex marriage — you can learn a great deal about it from newspaper accounts, online updates and even Twitter feeds. The courtroom is fairly bursting with reporters, and their updates offer detailed descriptions of both the witnesses’ testimony and the lawyers’ arguments. But, if you want to see the proceedings, you’ll have to travel to San Francisco and hope for a seat in the courtroom because the U.S. Supreme Court stayed the proposed broadcasting of the trial, even just to other courthouses within the 9th Circuit, and the district judge has now abandoned the whole idea.
The sidebar maneuverings regarding the broadcasting proposal has raised an issue almost as important as the same-sex-marriage ban itself. Northern District of California Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who is presiding, suggested broadcasting the trial. There followed in short order a series of procedural announcements by the 9th Circuit Judicial Conference, U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski and Walker, with the net effect of ostensibly allowing broadcast of the trial within the San Francisco courthouse and other courthouses in the 9th Circuit. Kozinski hadn’t yet decided whether the trial could be broadcast on YouTube, as the district judge proposed, when the supporters of Proposition 8 sought from the 9th Circuit a writ of mandamus barring or at least staying the broadcast. A three-judge panel denied the request, but the Supreme Court was more agreeable. It first granted a brief stay and followed it a few days later with an indefinite stay.
