Couple more things of interest: in its opening statement the majority lays out the reason the California court had previously found a constitutional right to marry (in its 1948 case legalizing interracial marriage) is an extrapolation of the individual right to raise an 'officially recognized and protected family.' Because California had taken great pains to give domestic partnerships the same substantive rights as marriages, the court says, the state had already recognized the legitimacy of a family unit based on a homosexual couple. In other words, the state's law giving some rights to gay couples was a key part of why the court concluded they deserved all of those rights. Even though the law in question they cite is the one they find unconstitutional! It's possible that if the state hadn't made a law allowing homosexuals to have domestic partnerships, the court wouldn't have found that they deserved equal protection at all.
That general argument doesn't substantively attach to any of the reasons they cite for why homosexuality should be 'constitutionally suspect' under California's equal protection clause, which is the factual basis for the law being 'strictly scrutinized' and overturned, however the argument they do make for homosexuality being constitutionally suspect is a bit thin, so California's precedent certainly helped.
According to the appeals court that first heard this case, a 'constitutionally suspect' classification must be based on an 'immutable trait,' must not impede in any way one's ability to participate in society, and must be associated with a 'stigma of inferiority.' No problem for the last two, but the first is tricky since there's no precedent in California law (in other words, it's up to the supreme court to say yes or no). The court says immutability need not be proved because, like religion, "a person’s sexual orientation is so integral an aspect of one’s identity, it is not appropriate to require a person to repudiate or change his or her sexual orientation in order to avoid discriminatory treatment."
So because religion is protected, other traits that are difficult but not impossible to change may also be. The court neatly sidesteps the argument as to whether or not homosexuality is innate; it need not be. So are the latter two traits enough? That, it seems, is entirely up to the court to decide.
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Another interesting part of this is the minority opinions, which there are two of. This court has 7 members, 6 appointed by Republicans. the vote was 4-3. One of the three dissenters finds that homosexuals deserve equal protection rights but that domestic partnerships are good enough to meet that standard. The other two, despicably, don't deign to address whether or not there is a constitutional violation at all. Instead, their dissent amounts to, "this decision was recently decided by the legislature and the people. The court oversteps its bounds by overturning such a law." In other words, the supreme court has no business overturning a law as unconstitutional if overturning that law would have major consequences. They cite 'separation of powers' as a reason they refuse to decide against the state.
They also, laughably, can't find constitutional protections for gays because they weren't specifically written into the constitution. Of course, neither were women or minorities. By those arguments, they would not, if they had heard the case, have overturned a ban on interracial marriage, either.
Yeah, I'm totally diggin' reading this opinion. It's pretty accessible, actually.
