The California Constitution figures in The Bob Zadek Show in two unrelated conversations: a discussion of marriage law prompted by the Supreme Court’s consideration of Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act, and an interview with a former state legislator and judge about high-speed rail funding and the limits the constitution places on California borrowing.
Marriage and Proposition 8
Bob Zadek framed the marriage question narrowly: not whether same-sex people should live together, share property, or raise children, but whether they should have access to the legal benefits that flow from the relationship. He described Proposition 8 as a proposition passed by a majority of California citizens which said that under the California Constitution, marriage can only be between people of different sexes. He said the proposition was being challenged on constitutional grounds as violating the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that the Supreme Court would hear argument on it. He paired this with the Defense of Marriage Act, which he described as a Clinton-era federal statute that Clinton signed, enacted by a Congress controlled by conservative Republicans, and which provided that for purposes of federal law marriage could only be between a man and a woman. He noted that before DOMA the federal government had always left the question of who is married to the states. The issue before the Supreme Court, in his framing, was whether a federal statute can say it will not respect the state decision on who can be married. Zadek stated the libertarian view as his own: that states should not be in the marriage business, should get rid of marriage licenses, and that no federal statute should bestow different rights on people who are married than on those who are not Where is Everyone Going? (2013). A caller, Terence, argued that marriage is a procreation deduction and that if you cannot have kids you cannot get the deduction, saying it is all about the money; Zadek agreed that the distinctions are economic. When Zadek asked whether Terence would support a federal statute providing that there be no legal distinction between married and not married, Terence said no, that people with kids should get the deduction, and that he thought society could not run without the distinction Where is Everyone Going? (2013).
High-Speed Rail and Constitutional Limits
Judge Quentin Kopp told Zadek that he agreed to participate in a lawsuit not only because the legislature and Governor Brown had violated the California Constitution, but because the project was no longer high-speed rail: it was not electrified, and it did not have its own track available from San Francisco down to San Jose. He described state legislation, passed and carried on by Jerry Hill, a state senator from San Mateo, that prohibits taking land for high-speed rail’s own right-of-way on the San Francisco Peninsula between San Francisco and San Jose Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018). Kopp recounted that Proposition 1A, the November 2008 bond issue, carried protections for taxpayers and that changes in what was passed could only be made by the voters of California, not the California legislature. He described a bill introduced by a feckless assembly member from San Mateo County that would take about $715 million from the California High-Speed Rail Authority and give it to San Mateo, San Francisco, and Santa Clara counties for Caltrain electrification; it passed and the governor signed it, and Kopp said the reason it is unconstitutional is that there is no authority for it in the 2008 bond issue. He said the lawsuit was the subject of a hearing in Sacramento County Superior Court, and that he was co-plaintiff with the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association in another lawsuit they won in December in Sacramento Superior Court on the same legal point: something was done which violates what the voters approved Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018).
Kopp also invoked the constitution on fiscal grounds, stating that the State of California cannot run a deficit, nor can any city or county or a special district in California, and that this is in the state constitution. He contrasted this with the federal government, where Congress can vote to approve spending money and run deficits. He noted that the original estimate of construction from San Francisco to Los Angeles was something like $33 billion, and that the estimate now is somewhere around $69 billion. His stated lesson was that it is better to overestimate than to underestimate and to make those arguments forthrightly to voters Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018). On the Madera-to-Wasco segment, he said the estimated cost broadcast to the public was about $6.5 billion for 119 miles, that about $3.1 billion was set aside for California High-Speed Rail in the Stimulus Act of Congress in 2009, that Illinois and Florida rejected stimulus money which was transferred to California, and that the cost estimate had risen to about $10.7 billion, with money coming from Governor Brown’s cap-and-trade legislation at about $600 million a year Let’s Talk About California’s “High-Speed” Rail (2018).
Across episodes
The marriage episode treats the California Constitution as the instrument Proposition 8 amended and as the site of a Fourteenth Amendment challenge, while the rail episode treats it as the source of constraints on the legislature’s use of bond money and on state deficit spending. The excerpts show no development or shared argument between the two treatments; the episodes touch the topic independently and at different levels of government.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state what the Supreme Court held in either case, nor which amendment the Proposition 8 challenge ultimately turned on beyond the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment as stated. They do not give the outcome of the Sacramento County Superior Court hearing or of the December ruling beyond Kopp’s statement that he and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association won on the same legal point. They do not quote the text of the California Constitution, Proposition 8, Proposition 1A, or the challenged bill, and they do not state the current status of any litigation described.