Sent to me by a lawyer friend:

The Prop 8 thing is a big deal, but the Court didn’t make any substantive ruling. Basically, Prop 8 was ruled unconstitutional in Federal District Court, the parties defending it (the proponents of Prop 8, not the State of California) appealed to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals where a panel of the court ruled that the proponents of Prop 8 had standing to appeal, but ruled that the law was unconstitutional on the merits. The parties defending the law appealed to the Supreme Court. Today the court ruled that those parties had no standing to appeal the District Court’s ruling. So, the court declined to rule on the merits and invalidated the appellate court ruling. Now the District Court ruling stands, so Prop 8 is invalidated. No statement from the court on whether they think it was/was not constitutional, which would have been major. An interesting to me legal nerd point is that the lawyers trying to invalidate the law were Ted Olson and David Boies. In Bush v. Gore, Olson represented Bush and Boies represented Gore.

 

Cheers.