Prop 8 Court Hearing Today on CSPAN, BYU Grad One of Three Judges
By Jamshid Ghazi Askar
Deseret News
Published: Monday, Nov. 29, 2010 10:56 p.m. MST
SALT LAKE CITY — When Proposition 8 gets its latest day in court on Monday, one of the three judges hearing the case will be a BYU alumnus.
C-SPAN will broadcast the hearing, which begins at 11 a.m. and is scheduled to last two hours. The first hour will be devoted to deciding whether the parties filing the appeal have a right to do so. If that threshold is met then the second hour will include oral arguments from both sides about the constitutionality of Proposition 8.
The upcoming hearing before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco stems from the August decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, when U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that Proposition 8 violates equal protection rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Judge N. Randy Smith, 61, will be one of the three judges to hear the case. He earned his bachelor’s degree from BYU in 1974, and three years later was a member of the second graduating class of BYU’s J. Reuben Clark Law School.
In 1984, while practicing law full-time in Idaho, he began teaching political science and management classes as an adjunct professor at Idaho State University in Pocatello, something he continues doing to this day. Smith served as chairman of the Idaho Republican Party in the 1990s and began his career on the bench in 1995 as a trial court judge. In 2007 he joined the appellate 9th Circuit court thanks to a nomination by President George W. Bush.
The other two 9th Circuit judges who will sit in panel with Smith are Stephen Reinhardt, a 1980 nominee of President Jimmy Carter who is widely acknowledged as one of the most liberal appellate judges in the country, and Michael Hawkins, a centrist Democrat nominated in 1994 by President Bill Clinton.
The three-judge panel will likely take the matter under consideration before issuing a decision. Whichever party comes up on the losing end of Monday’s hearing is expected to appeal, either by asking the full panel of 11 judges from the 9th Circuit to re-hear case or filing an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.
e-mail: jaskar@desnews.com