When a federal judge struck down California’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriages in 2010, then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and then-Attorney General Jerry Brown took an unusual step: They declined to defend their state’s constitution. Specifically, Brown, now the governor to the west, said Proposition 8, which added language to the California constitution that defined marriage as between a man and a woman, violated the federal constitution. Similarly, in 2011, more than a year before he declared his personal support for gay marriage, President Barack Obama decided not to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act, saying that he believed the law ...
