State Appeals Court Clears the Way for California’s Comprehensive Domestic Partnership Law to Take Full Effect on January 1st


For Immediate Release: December 22, 2004

SACRAMENTO—A California appeals court today denied a request by antigay activists to prevent California’s comprehensive domestic partnership law, AB 205, from becoming operative on January 1, 2005. As a result, the law will go into full effect on January 1, 2005. The Court of Appeal also ordered an expedited briefing schedule on the validity of AB 205. Under the Court’s briefing schedule, the briefing will be complete in January 2005.

“We registered as domestic partners and are looking forward to the new law taking full effect in January, so our family will have more of the protections we badly need,” said Rich Llewellyn. “While we hope to marry legally one day, AB 205 will protect us in important ways until we are treated equally under the state’s Constitution.” Los Angeles resident Llewellyn and his domestic partner of more than twenty-five years, Chris Caldwell, are raising teenage twins, and are participating in the litigation to help defend the domestic partner law.

When it goes fully into effect on January 1, 2005, AB 205 will provide critical protections and impose significant responsibilities on registered domestic partners in California. The new law’s protections for families headed by same-sex couples include: community property, mutual responsibility for debt, parenting rights including obligations for custody and support, and the ability to claim a partner’s body after death. The law does not allow for joint filing for state taxes and certain other protections under state law. A.B. 205 also does not provide access to over 1,000 federal protections that heterosexual married couples enjoy.

A trial court, on September 8, 2004 rejected claims by antigay groups that the new domestic partnership protections guaranteed under A.B. 205 were in violation of Proposition 22 (the state law prohibiting California from honoring marriage between same-sex couples entered into in other states), drawing a distinction between these protections for same-sex couples and marriage.

Equality California, as well as 12 California couples, who are registered domestic partners and intervened in the lawsuit to defend A.B. 205 are represented by the Law Office of David C. Codell, the American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU affiliates in Northern California, Southern California and San Diego, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and Lambda Legal.

“We’re grateful that the law will go fully into effect on January 1, 2005 and tens of thousands of California families will begin to enjoy the protections provided by AB 205,” said Geoffrey Kors, Executive Director of Equality California. “A.B. 205 is a big step in the right direction, but lesbian and gay Californians will only have true equality once the state allows same-sex couples to marry.”