Friday: Report from U.S. Supreme Court by SF city attorney
April 2, 2013 •
Don’t miss San Francisco Chief Deputy City Attorney Therese Stewart’s talk this Friday, April 5, 12 to 1 p.m. in Franklin Lobby 1 Conference Room, on the two marriage equality cases now being considered by the U.S. Supreme Court.
In the talk, entitled “Supreme Court Arguments in Perry and Windsor: Update from a Partisan Observer,” Stewart will give her own perspective on the two cases dealing with California’s Proposition 8 and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
The event is co-sponsored by the Office of the General Counsel Diversity Committee and UCOP Pride. (If you can’t attend in person, you can still call in at 1-866-740-1260 and dial access code 9879982 to hear the talk.)
The San Francisco City Attorney’s Office and its involvement in the cases was recently the subject of a story, including video, in New York Times.
Stewart received her J.D. degree from Berkeley Law in 1981 and spent the next 20 years as a litigator with Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk & Rabkin.
She became the first openly gay president of the Bar Association of San Francisco in 1999 and worked with the city in successfully defending an ordinance requiring city contractors to provide the same employment benefits to same-sex domestic partners as to spouses. She became chief deputy in 2001 and has been an active advocate of marriage equality.
The cases Stewart will be speaking about are:
Hollingsworth v. Perry, which deals with the constitutionality of Proposition 8, the 2008 California amendment that defines as valid only marriages between a man and a woman. Check the Office of the City Attorney of San Francisco website for more about the history of its opposition to Proposition 8 and its role in the legal battle for marriage equality in California.
United States v. Windsor, which challenges the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act, a federal law that defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman. The case involves Edie Windsor, who had to pay hefty estate taxes following the death of her female spouse, Thea Spyer, because their marriage was not recognized.
Don’t miss this opportunity to learn more about these historic cases.
