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SANTA CRUZ — During a U.S. Department of Homeland Security search at a Lower Ocean neighborhood home early Wednesday, a Santa Cruz man was taken into custody in a child pornography-related investigation. Court records for the case, filed late last month in the U.S. Northern District Court, were sealed by Magistrate Judge Donna M. Ryu as of this week. However, an online case description cites federal code for alleged crimes relating to material involving the sexual exploitation of minors. According to a copy of the executed search warrant shared with the Sentinel, the raid occurred on the 100 block of...

Judge Vaughn Walker, the now-retired federal judge in San Francisco who nullified California’s Proposition 8 in 2010, said if judges really are umpires, they must sometimes “move the strike zone” in order to champion social issues like same-sex marriage. “Case by case, what judges do and must do is take account of the pitcher and the batter in the legal arena, watch the windup, the throw, the curve, and the delivery and then, where they believe appropriate, move the strike zone,” Walker wrote on Aug. 28 in the University of Illinois Law Review. But Walker, flouting Justice Antonin Scalia and...

A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that it will not review a three-judge panel's decision to overturn California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. Following this ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Proposition 8 proponents plan to appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, putting the battle for same-sex marriage on a national stage. The Supreme Court could decide to hear the case as part of its docket next year. The ruling comes after a federal appeals court in Boston ruled Thursday that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), that says states don't have to...

The California Supreme Court's newest justice, Goodwin Liu, hits the ground running this morning with a high-profile issue: Proposition 8. The high court is hearing oral arguments in San Francisco on whether state law gives sponsors of the same-sex marriage ban the right to defend it in a case now pending before a federal appellate court. U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco struck down the voter-approved measure last year as unconstitutional. State officials, including Gov. Jerry Brown and Attorney General Kamala Harris, have declined to appeal. Another federal judge has since rejected the proponents' argument that Walker's decision...

A federal judge on Tuesday dealt a blow to opponents of same-sex marriage by upholding an earlier ruling in favor of such unions -- despite the revelation that the judge behind the earlier ruling is gay and in a relationship. Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware said former Chief Judge Vaughn Walker did not have to divulge whether he wanted to marry his own gay partner before he declared last year that voter-approved Proposition 8 was unconstitutional. Lawyers for backers of the ban argued at a hearing Monday that Walker should have recused himself or disclosed his relationship because he...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A federal judge has upheld a gay judge's ruling to strike down California's same-sex marriage ban. Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware said Tuesday that former Chief Judge Vaughn Walker did not have to divulge whether he wanted to marry his own gay partner before he declared last year that voter-approved Proposition 8 was unconstitutional.

Sponsors of California's ban on same-sex marriage tried to convince an apparently skeptical federal judge Monday that the jurist who overturned their ballot measure should have been disqualified because he failed to disclose his longtime relationship with a male partner. Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's ruling last year throwing out the ballot measure should itself be overturned because the judge didn't reveal his relationship, attorney Charles Cooper said.Walker's 10-year relationship, which he publicly confirmed only after leaving the bench, was "a fact critically relevant to his interest in the case," Cooper declared during a nearly three-hour hearing in San...

Follow Howard Mintz's live blog on this morning's arguments in the Proposition 8 case.9:58 a.m.: Attorney says Prop 8 backers were entitled to an "impartial tribunal"Judge James Ware has started the argument over Judge Walker's alleged bias by disclosing that he once presided over a same-sex marriage during the brief period that it was legalized in California before Prop. 8's passage by the voters, although he insisted he did not believe it would impact his ability to consider today's issues. Charles Cooper, Prop. 8's lawyer, appeared to agree, passing up any chance to bump Ware and launching into his argument...

Attorney General Kamala Harris and San Francisco city officials moved Thursday to derail a bid by backers of Proposition 8 to wipe out last year's ruling striking down the law because of the trial judge's same-sex relationship, calling it "tired," "meritless" and motivated by bias against gays. In court papers, Harris threw California's weight against Proposition 8 sponsors, who recently argued that Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker should have removed himself from the legal battle over same-sex marriage because he has been in a long-term same-sex relationship. Walker last summer found that California's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional,...

To hear them describe it, defenders of traditional marriage during last year’s trial on California’s Proposition 8 felt like the visiting team in a game with a hometown referee. It was an open secret that District Court Chief Judge Vaughn Walker was gay, although he had never publicly acknowledged it. Under the circumstances, challenging his objectivity in a case on the constitutionality of “one man, one woman” marriage carried substantial risks, such as angering the judge or being accused of “outing” a public figure, without any promise of success. The circumstances changed when Judge Walker, now retired, was quoted in...

Backers of California's same-sex marriage ban today moved to wipe out last year's ruling declaring Proposition 8 unconstitutional, saying the federal judge who heard the historic case should have recused himself because he is gay and has been in a long-term same-sex relationship. . In court papers, the Proposition 8 campaign argues that former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker had a presumed bias in the case because he is openly gay. Walker has never concealed the fact he is gay, but never discussed the issue publicly until a meeting with reporters last month in his San Francisco office before...

The federal judge who struck down California's gay marriage ban has confirmed longtime rumors that he's gay, but said his sexuality was irrelevant in deciding the landmark case. Speaking for the first time about the case since retiring from the bench in February, former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker said he never considered recusing himself from deciding the constitutionality of Proposition 8 because of his sexual orientation, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

The now-retired federal judge who struck down California's ban on same-sex marriage shared his reflections with reporters for the first time Wednesday, saying that the trial should have been televised and that he never considered stepping aside because he is gay."If you thought a judge's sexuality, ethnicity, national origin (or) gender would prevent the judge from handling a case, that's a very slippery slope," former Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker told reporters in a conference room at the San Francisco courthouse where he served for 21 years."I don't think it's relevant," he said.Independent thinker Walker, 67, who retired from...

Reporting from San Francisc — Vaughn R. Walker, the federal judge who ruled that Proposition 8 was unconstitutional, will leave the bench at the end of the year for the private sector, the U.S. District Court in San Francisco announced Wednesday. A media liaison for the court said Walker's decision was unrelated to his August ruling that found a ban on same-sex marriage violated the U.S. Constitution.

SAN FRANCISCO -- Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker, who struck down California's ban on same-sex marriage last month, will retire at the end of this year, his court said today. Walker, 66, a former business lawyer in San Francisco, was appointed to the court by President George H.W. Bush in 1990 and began a seven-year term as chief judge of the Northern District of California in September 2004. He will perhaps be best remembered for his Aug. 4 ruling overturning Proposition 8, the initiative passed by California voters in 2008 that defined marriage as the union of a man...

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Backers of California's same-sex marriage ban urged a federal appeals court to overturn the trial judge who struck down Proposition 8 by arguing late Friday that his consideration of evidence was "egregiously selective and one-sided." In written arguments to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers for the ban's sponsors alleged that Chief U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker "quite willfully" disregarded a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court precedent and other relevant information when he decided the voter-approved measure was an unconstitutional violation of gay Californians' civil rights. "The district court based its findings almost exclusively on an...

When U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker struck down California’s Proposition 8, the subsequent hubbub centered primarily around whether the decision was an example of judicial activism. Whether Walker, or any federal judge, is within their jurisdiction to rule on a state’s constitution is an entirely separate argument from whether the institution of marriage ought to be redefined. No matter which side of the latter issue you support, it is of greater importance to the integrity of our republican jurisprudence that we all embrace the correct answer to the former. It is the purview of the states to craft...

This week, two things happened in the gay marriage wars: The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a stay overruling U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker's decision to permit gay marriages to take place immediately, before higher courts have a chance to review his unprecedented ruling. And a new poll released by Public Policy Polling shows that Americans continue to oppose gay marriage by an almost 2-to-1 margin. Normally, when a lower court judge finds a new constitutional right never before acknowledged by any federal court except his, he is modest and reasonable enough to stay his decision, recognizing that...

Even some who support same-sex marriage worry that, in striking down California's voter-approved proposition defining marriage as between one man and one woman, U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker went too far. They are right -- and not the only ones who should be concerned. Walker's ruling is indefensible as a matter of law wholly apart from its result. By refusing to acknowledge binding Supreme Court precedent, substantial evidence produced at trial that was contrary to the holding and plain common sense, the ruling exhibits none of the requirements of a traditional decision. This opinion is arbitrary and capricious, and its...

A federal appeals court has extended a stay on same-sex marriages in California until it decides whether a ban on such unions is constitutional. It is just the latest turn in a protracted legal battle over Proposition 8, the voter-approved ban. The ruling, issued by a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, came less than a week after a federal district judge, Vaughn R. Walker, lifted a stay he had imposed to allow proponents of the ban to argue why same-sex marriages should not proceed. On Aug. 4, Judge Walker ruled that Proposition...