Appeals Court Rejects Stay on AB 205

State Appeals Court Clears the Way for Comprehensive California Domestic Partnership Law to Take Full Effect on Jan 1st.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: December 21, 2004

A California appeals court today denied a request by antigay activists to prevent California’s comprehensive domestic partnership law from becoming operative on January 1, 2005. Today’s decision clears the way for the domestic partnership law, AB 205, to go into full effect on January 1, 2005. The Court of Appeal also ordered an expedited briefing schedule on the validity of AB 205. Under the Court’s briefing schedule, the briefing will be complete in January 2005.

“We registered as domestic partners and are looking forward to the new law taking full effect in January, so our family will have more of the protections we badly need,” said Rich Llewellyn. “While we hope to marry legally one day, AB 205 will protect us in important ways until we are treated equally under the state’s Constitution.” Los Angeles resident Llewellyn and his domestic partner of more than twenty-five years, Chris Caldwell, are raising teenage twins, and are participating in the litigation to help defend the domestic partner law.

When it goes into full effect on January 1, 2005, AB 205 will provide critical protections and impose significant responsibilities on registered domestic partners in California. The new law’s protections for families headed by same-sex couples include: community property, mutual responsibility for debt, parenting rights including obligations for custody and support, and the ability to claim a partner’s body after death. The law does not allow for joint filing for state taxes and certain other protections under state law. AB 205 also does not provide access to over 1,000 federal protections that heterosexual married couples enjoy.

A trial court, on September 8, 2004 rejected claims by antigay groups that the new domestic partnership protections guaranteed under AB 205 were in violation of Proposition 22 (the state law prohibiting California from honoring marriage between same-sex couples entered into in other states), drawing a distinction between these protections for same-sex couples and marriage.

Equality California and 12 California couples who are registered domestic partners intervened in the lawsuit to defend AB 205. Equality California and the couples are represented by the Law Office of David C. Codell, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU affiliates in Northern California, Southern California and San Diego, and Lambda Legal.

“We’re grateful that the law will go fully into effect on January 1, 2005 and tens of thousands of California families will begin to enjoy the protections provided by AB 205,” said Geoffrey Kors, Executive Director of Equality California. “A.B. 205 is a big step in the right direction, but lesbian and gay Californians will only have true equality once the state allows same-sex couples to marry.”

EQCA is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots-based, statewide advocacy organization whose mission is to ensure the dignity, safety, equality and civil rights of all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Californians. Equality California is one of the largest and fastest growing statewide LGBT organizations in the country. We can be contacted through our website at http://www.eqca.org.

NCLR is a national legal resource center with a primary commitment to advancing the rights and safety of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people and their families through a program of litigation, public policy advocacy, free legal advice and counseling, and public education. We can be contacted through our website at http://www.nclrights.org.


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