Arizona Governor Turns To Supreme Court For Support In Anti-Gay Law

Notorious anti-gay Arizona Governor Jan Brewer has again brought another controversial law to the Supreme Court of the land. First it was Arizona’s controversial immigrations laws, then it was Obamacare. Now Governor Brewer wants the Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court which struck down an Arizona law which denies state employees to keep their same-sex partners on their benefits, including health insurance.

Brewer officially asked the Supreme Court for a writ of certiorari on July 2, in hopes that the Supreme Court would overturn the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit’s September 2011 ruling in Diaz vs. Brewer. The Ninth Circuit Court has already turned down the State’s request to hear the case in front of a full 11 judge panel.

Last September the Appeals Court put a preliminary injunction against the State’s implementation of the law. Earlier that year a lower court had issued a similar injunction. Injunctions are issued by courts that believe the laws being challenged have a good chance or being ruled unconstitutional.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported in September,

“The 3-0 ruling upheld a federal judge’s injunction against a law that was signed by Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer in 2009 and was scheduled to take effect [in 2011]. Brewer’s predecessor, Janet Napolitano, had authorized health benefits for state employees’ domestic partners in April 2008 before leaving to become President Obama’s Homeland Security secretary. The district court found that the plaintiffs demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits, because they showed that the law adversely affected a classification of employees on the basis of sexual orientation, and did not further any of the state’s claimed justifiable interests,”

The court ruled for the nine plaintiffs that if the law was implemented before its merits were decided it would cause irreparable harm to the plaintiffs.