Take that, country club Republicans! The California Supreme Court ruled 6-0 on Monday that country clubs – and all businesses – that offer discounts to opposite sex spouses must do the same for same sex partners.
The ruling will affect a broad range of businesses, including banks and mortgage lenders, auto insurers and health clubs. Lenders will have to consider domestic partners’ joint income in making loans, and insurers will have to offer the same multiple-driver discounts they give married couples.
The ruling stated, “A business that extends benefits to spouses it denies to registered domestic partners engages in impermissible marital status discrimination.”
The ruling evoked kneejerk screeching from mouth-breathers on the extreme right, who, reading from their GOP talking points, immediately decried the ruling as an example of liberal judicial activism. One of these knuckleheads was quoted as saying it was time for voters to “stop the out-of-control courts from trampling marriage and trashing the deeply felt standards of private businesses and organizations.”
Not so fast, talibanis. The California Supreme Court is the only branch of the state government controlled by your side.
Justices on the California Supreme Court include five Republicans, including the chief justice, and one Democrat. The seat formerly held by Janice Rogers Brown, a rightwing extremist tapped by President Bush for the federal bench, remains open awaiting a nomination from Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Appears to us that these Republicans justices were following the law the way the Democrats in the State Legislature wrote it.
