For the better part of the past decade, California has been engaged in an epic battle over, well, getting engaged. The multiple court cases, votes, legal victories, reversals, protests, celebration and more protests have kept same-sex couples in an ongoing state of marital limbo and made it downright confusing to keep track of where things stand.

The latest

On December 7, after months of anticipation, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it would tackle the issue of same-sex marriage by examining two different cases. The first case involves deciding on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and will examine whether the government can deny federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples.

In a more surprising move, the court also decided to review a lower court’s decision in February that ruled California’s Proposition 8 unconstitutional on the grounds that it violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Following that earlier ruling, opponents of gay marriage appealed to the Supreme Court, who will now likely hear arguments next spring. Its decision on the issue could have national ramifications in determining whether or not gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

How we got here

It’s been a long, strange trip to say the least.  For the sake of brevity, let’s start in 2008 (although the battle got heated years before that – just scroll through this interactive timeline for all the gritty details). In June of that year, counties began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This started a month after the California state Supreme Court  (not federal) overturned the existing ban, The court ruled that marriage was a fundamental right that could not be denied based on sexual orientation. And over the next six months, thousands of same-sex couples in California got married.

A short-lived celebration

But the honeymoon was cut short during the 2008 presidential election that November, when just over half of California voters approved a ballot measure known as Proposition 8 (which supporters labeled the “California Marriage Protection Act”). The measure trumped the court’s earlier decision and amended the state’s Constitution by adding the provision that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California.” Interestingly, the same court also later rejected efforts by gay marriage advocates to strike down the ban.

Bringing it to the feds

Less than two years after Proposition 8 passed and was upheld by the California Supreme Court, the tables shifted yet again. The case was brought to a federal court in San Francisco, and in 2010 presiding Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that the ban – although popularly approved by voters – was unconstitutional. In the decision, he wrote that the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution (in the Fourteenth Amendment) guaranteed equal rights to same-sex couples, including the right to marry.

In an interesting twist, Judge Walker (who has since retired from the bench) later announced that he was gay with a longtime partner. Backers of the ban argued that the judge was biased in his ruling and should have recused himself from the case. This development, however, did not override the judge’s decision. The case was then appealed to the higher Ninth Circuit Court who uphold the lower court’s ruling.

What made the Ninth Circuit’s ruling different from the others?

In their 2-1 decision this month, the Ninth Circuit judges upheld Judge Walker’s decision: they determined that the ban deprived gay and lesbian couples of their guaranteed civil rights, and was therefore a violation of the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. But the two courts used different reasoning in deciding the case. In the lower court’s decision, Judge Walker examined whether same-sex couples had a constitutional right to marry, and ruled that they did. The Ninth Circuit judges, on the other hand, avoided this question, instead focusing explicitly on how Proposition 8 singled out same-sex couples and deprived them of a right that they had previously won. On this issue, the court determined that there was a lack of equal treatment.

The judges on the Ninth Circuit essentially said that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional not because it prevents gay couples from getting married, but because it creates different tiers of privilege for different types of people. And that, they ruled, goes against the constitutional mandate that citizens receive equal protection of the laws.

In the ruling, Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt wrote:

 ”All that Proposition 8 accomplished was to take away from same-sex couples the right to be granted marriage licenses and thus legally to use the designation ‘marriage.’ Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gay men and lesbians in California.”

Now what?

On February 22, two weeks after the Ninth Circuit’s decision, ProtectMarriage.com, a coalition of conservative and religious groups that have long backed the ban, asked the Ninth Circuit to rehear the case with a larger panel of judges (eleven of them, instead of three). In early December, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to take on the issue – probably this spring – and its nine justices will now get the final word.

What are common arguments for and against same-sex marriage?

Proponents of same-sex marriage argue that the freedom to marry is a fundamental right in American society that should extend to all couples regardless of gender. Denying gay and lesbian couples this right, they argue, is discriminatory, illegal, and based only on prejudice.

Opponents argue that marriage is a cherished institution historically defined as a union between a man and a woman. Allowing same-sex couples to marry, they insist, will fundamentally weaken and undercut the conventional purpose of marriage (namely procreation and child rearing). Factions within a number of religious groups have also been vocal and politically active in opposing gay marriage, arguing that, among other things, it is contrary to God’s will and normalizes homosexual behavior (that they consider a sin).

(Most inmates in county jail awaiting trial or serving time for a misdemeanor, or who are on probation, can still vote, according to the California Secretary of State’s voting guide for current and former inmates).

And this raises an important question: is voting a privilege that should be denied to people who commit crimes, or is it an inalienable right?

Most states in the U.S. seem seem to agree with the former idea. In fact, only two – Maine and Vermont – allow their prisoners and parolees to continue voting.

According to The Sentencing Project, 5.3 million Americans (1 in 40 adults) were unable to vote – disenfranchised -  in 2008 due to a felony conviction. That figure is expected to rise to nearly 6 million for this election, including 1.4 million African-American men.

Among disenfranchised felons, nearly 75 percent are not actually behind bars at all – most are either on parole, probation, or have completed their sentences altogether.

Florida, Iowa, Kentucky, Virginia have the nation’s strictest felon voting restrictions, in which felons permanently lose their voting rights.

Where do you stand?

Source: ACLU

Additional Resources

• ProCon.org
• National Conference of State Legislatures

About two-thirds of Californians drink, bathe, brush their teeth, and flush their toilets with water that comes from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. That’s roughly 25 million people who get at least some portion of their hydration from one big triangular watering hole.

It’s pretty easy to take for granted that water magically pours out of the tap when you turn your faucet on. But chances are, that H20 has gone through a pretty serious journey to reach you – and it’s probably worth knowing where it comes from, and how safe the supply is. See, one of the things that’s kind of funky about California (among the many), is that the majority of the population lives in the southern part of the state, but most of the available fresh water supply is in the northern half. So, to hydrate the millions of people living and farming in the state’s drier regions, California has had to, ahem, tap the crap out of its available resources, pumping water hundreds of miles over large mountains to reach the populations that rely on it.

So what is the Delta?

Credit: USGS

Just south of Sacramento on the western edge of the Central Valley is where California’s two major rivers meet – the San Joaquin from the south and the Sacramento from the north. Between them, they drain almost half of California’s freshwater supply, collecting and concentrating rainfall and snowmelt from the Sierra Nevada and funneling it towards the San Francisco Bay.

And this is what makes the Delta: a 700-square-mile inland estuary at the confluence of these two rivers, where fresh water from the mountains mixes with salt water from the Pacific.

Think of it as California’s big drain.

How it used to be …

Courtesy of Bay Nature Magazine; artist: Laura Cunningham

Before we started messing with it, the Delta was a vast brackish marsh filled with wetland plants (tules) and winding tidal channels. Much of it was submerged; all the fresh water from mountain snowmelt mixed with salt water from the ocean. In fact, when Spanish explorers first viewed the Delta from the top of Mt. Diablo in the late 1700s, they thought they’d discovered an inland sea. The area teemed with birds and game animals, including elk, antelope, and grizzly bears. Its few human inhabitants – small settlements of Miwok Indians – fished and hunted there only during summer months on small areas of dry land.

And how it is now …

As you may have guessed, things are a bit different today. Over the last 150 years, we’ve dramatically and irreversibly changed the environment and landscape of the Delta, an epic effort to meet the steep demands of California’s increasingly crowded, thirsty population. Today’s Delta is dotted with more than 1,000 miles of earthen walls – called levees. Much of the area has been “reclaimed” for agricultural use – land that’s been drained and cordoned off by the levees. Huge pumps now deliver millions of gallons of fresh water to cities in the East Bay, South Bay, and throughout the lower half of the state, as well as farms in the arid San Joaquin Valley to the south.

A fragile system

In 2004, a breach in the Upper Jones Tract Levee flooded the surrounding farmlands and residential areas. The probable culprit: a rodent - possibly a beaver. (source: CA Department of Water Resources)

But the transformation has greatly upset the fragile environmental balance of the region, threatening many of the native fish and plant species that can’t survive without steady streams of fresh water. The debate over how much water should be diverted from the Delta has long been a hot button political issue, instigating ongoing battles between northern and southern cities. It’s also pitted environmentalists and ocean salmon fisherman against heavy water users, like farmers, who demand large consistent deliveries of fresh water diverted from the Delta.

The modern development of the Delta has also created an equally fragile water delivery system that millions of Californians depend on. Most of the levees are old and crumbling. If hit by a big enough earthquake, many would likely be destroyed. And because much of the reclaimed land in the region is below sea level (because of ongoing land subsidence), the area would be flooded, along with the nearly 400,000 people who live there.

Source: CA Dept. of Water Resources

Perhaps even more catastrophic: because the levees separate fresh water from salt water, if they collapse, the two types of water mix, leaving much of the state high and dry without a major source of fresh water.

Pretty serious business.

State leaders have been arguing for years about how to deal with this threat. A multibillion dollar water infrastructure ballot measure has repeatedly stalled, and now Governor Jerry Brown is floating the very costly prospect of building peripheral tunnels that would capture and divert fresh water before it even enters the Delta.

Learn and explore more about the Delta

• Check out KQED QUEST’s multimedia series on the Delta, including an extensive set of interactive historical maps.
• Find out where your drinking water comes from (from the Water Education Foundation).