A Statement from NCLR Legal Director Shannon Minter Clarifying the Recent Court Filing in the Prop 8 Challenge

06.09.09—NCLR and our co counsel (Lambda Legal, the ACLU, Munger, Tolles & Olson LLP, and David Codell) filed a petition for rehearing for the limited purpose of asking the court to correct a factual error in the opinion. The document must be titled petition for rehearing because that is the only procedural vehicle for requesting any modification, but we are simply asking the Court to correct a factual error, not to rehear the entire case. The current decision states that the racially discriminatory initiative amendment that was challenged on federal grounds in Mulkey v. Reitman was never challenged on the alternative ground that it was an unlawful amendment (i.e., the same ground upon which we challenged Prop 8). In fact, however, that initiative amendment was challenged on that basis in a companion lawsuit, so we have asked the Court to correct that error. That is important because the distinction between an amendment and a revision will continue to be an important issue under California law, and we do not want future courts to be misled by that factual error.

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