The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last week barred the use by lawyers of peremptory challenges of potential jurors on the ground that the venireman (to use the old phrase) is gay or lesbian.
“Gays and lesbians have been systematically excluded from the most important institutions of self-governance,” Judge Stephen Reinhardt wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel in SmithKline Beecham (GSK) v. Abbott Laboratories. “Strikes exercised on the basis of sexual orientation continue this deplorable tradition of treating gays and lesbians as undeserving of participation in our nation’s most cherished rites and rituals.”
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