BILL ANALYSIS Ó
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|SENATE RULES COMMITTEE | SB 1005|
|Office of Senate Floor Analyses | |
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UNFINISHED BUSINESS
Bill No: SB 1005
Author: Jackson (D), et al.
Amended: 6/6/16
Vote: 21
SENATE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE: 7-0, 3/29/16
AYES: Jackson, Moorlach, Anderson, Hertzberg, Leno, Monning,
Wieckowski
SENATE FLOOR: 35-2, 4/14/16
AYES: Allen, Anderson, Bates, Beall, Berryhill, Block,
Cannella, De León, Fuller, Gaines, Glazer, Hall, Hancock,
Hernandez, Hertzberg, Hill, Hueso, Huff, Jackson, Lara, Leno,
Leyva, Liu, Mendoza, Mitchell, Monning, Moorlach, Nguyen, Pan,
Pavley, Roth, Stone, Vidak, Wieckowski, Wolk
NOES: Morrell, Nielsen
NO VOTE RECORDED: Galgiani, McGuire, Runner
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 63-1, 6/16/16 - See last page for vote
SUBJECT: Marriage
SOURCE: Equality California
DIGEST: The bill replaces references to a husband or wife with
references to a spouse, defines spouse as including registered
domestic partner, and makes other conforming and related
changes.
Assembly Amendments replace "domestic partner" with "registered
domestic partner" and make conforming changes.
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ANALYSIS:
Existing law:
1)Provides that marriage is a personal relation arising out of a
civil contract between two persons. (Fam. Code Sec. 300.)
2)Provides that registered domestic partners have the same
rights, protections, and benefits and are subject to the same
responsibilities, obligations, and duties under law, whether
they derive from statutes, administrative regulations, court
rules, government policies, common law, or any other
provisions or sources of law, as are granted to and imposed
upon spouses. Also applies to former domestic partners and
surviving domestic partners. (Fam. Code Sec. 297.5.)
This bill:
1)Replaces "husband" and "wife" with "spouse" throughout the
various codes.
2)Clarifies that "spouse" includes registered domestic partners
throughout the codes.
Background
On May 15, 2008, the California Supreme Court, in a 4-3
decision, struck down as unconstitutional the California
statutes enacted by Proposition 22 in 2000 limiting marriage to
a man and a woman. (In re Marriage Cases (2008) 43 Cal.4th
757.) Following the Court's landmark decision, approximately
18,000 same-sex couples wed in California. However, opponents
of same-sex marriage began circulating petitions to amend the
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Page 3
statutory text of the invalid Family Code section into the State
Constitution before the Supreme Court issued its ruling, and the
opponents gathered sufficient signatures to qualify the petition
as Proposition 8. On November 4, 2008, Proposition 8 passed by
a narrow 52 percent margin. Civil rights organizations again
filed suit asking that it overturn the initiative as an invalid
revision.
Roughly one year later, the California Supreme Court in Strauss
v. Horton (2009) 46 Cal.4th 364, upheld Proposition 8 in a 6-1
decision, but held, unanimously, that the same-sex marriages
performed in California before the passage of Proposition 8
remained valid. In Strauss, the Supreme Court held that
Proposition 8 did not repeal the constitutional rights of
individuals to choose their life partners and enter into "a
committed, officially recognized, and protected family
relationship that enjoys all the constitutionally based
incidents of marriage." (Strauss, 46 Cal.4th at 388.) Instead,
the Court found, Proposition 8 "carves out a narrow and limited
exception to these state constitutional rights, reserving the
official designation of the term 'marriage' for the union of
opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law,
but leaving undisturbed all of the other extremely significant
substantive aspects of a same-sex couple's state constitutional
right to establish an officially recognized and protected family
relationship and the guarantee of equal protection of the laws."
(Id.)
Less than a week prior to the Strauss decision, opponents of
Proposition 8 filed an action in federal court in the Northern
District of California challenging Proposition 8 as violating
both the Due Process clause and Equal Protection clause of the
14th Amendment to the United States Constitution. On February
7, 2012, the United States Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit
reviewed and affirmed the judgment of the district court and
held that the People of California, via Proposition 8, violated
the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution by using their
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power to target a minority group and withdraw a right that the
group already possessed, without a legitimate reason for doing
so. (Perry v. Brown, 671 F.3d 1052 (2012).) The proponents of
Proposition 8 appealed that decision, but on June 26, 2013, the
United States Supreme Court dismissed the appeal for lack of
standing. The State of California thereafter began allowing
same-sex couples to marry, and began recognizing marriages
between same-sex couples from other states. (Hollingsworth v.
Perry, 133 S.Ct 786 (2013).) In light of these court decisions,
the Legislature has enacted a number of measures that update the
California Code to accurately reflect the law in California.
(See SB 1306 (Leno, Chapter 82, Statutes of 2014) and AB 1403
(Committee on Judiciary, Chapter 510, Statutes of 2013). This
bill updates the remaining codes and ensures clarity with
respect to the rights of same-sex spouses.
FISCAL EFFECT: Appropriation: No Fiscal
Com.:NoLocal: No
SUPPORT: (Verified6/17/16)
Equality California (source)
Attorney General Kamala Harris
American Civil Liberties Union of California
American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees,
AFL-CIO
California Teachers Association
National Association of Social Workers, California Chapter
National Center for Lesbian Rights
Secular Coalition of California
OPPOSITION: (Verified6/17/16)
None received
ARGUMENTS IN SUPPORT: The American Civil Liberties Union of
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California, in support, further notes: "Language [in the codes]
that does not accurately reflect the law can create confusion
for courts, litigants, and applicants for state programs about
what rights are available to same-sex spouses, particularly
self-represented individuals."
ASSEMBLY FLOOR: 63-1, 6/16/16
AYES: Achadjian, Alejo, Arambula, Atkins, Baker, Bloom,
Bonilla, Bonta, Brown, Burke, Calderon, Campos, Chang, Chau,
Chávez, Chiu, Chu, Cooley, Cooper, Dababneh, Daly, Dodd,
Eggman, Frazier, Cristina Garcia, Eduardo Garcia, Gatto,
Gipson, Gomez, Gonzalez, Gordon, Gray, Hadley, Holden, Irwin,
Jones-Sawyer, Lackey, Levine, Linder, Lopez, Low, Maienschein,
Mayes, McCarty, Medina, Mullin, Nazarian, O'Donnell, Olsen,
Quirk, Ridley-Thomas, Rodriguez, Salas, Santiago, Mark Stone,
Thurmond, Ting, Wagner, Weber, Wilk, Williams, Wood, Rendon
NOES: Grove
NO VOTE RECORDED: Travis Allen, Bigelow, Brough, Dahle, Beth
Gaines, Gallagher, Harper, Roger Hernández, Jones, Kim,
Mathis, Melendez, Obernolte, Patterson, Steinorth, Waldron
Prepared by:Nichole Rapier / JUD. / (916) 651-4113
6/17/16 15:03:56
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