Professor Feeney Comments on Anti-Gay Ballot Proposal for Associated Press, New York Times
Professor Floyd Feeney commented for media including the Associated Press and the New York Times on a California ballot proposal that would require the killing of gays and lesbians. The shocking proposal has prompted calls for state officials to reject the measure, but Professor Feeney said there may be no legal means for them to do so.
"The courts, rightly or wrongly, treat the initiative as sort of the citizen right, and they are reluctant to get involved in trying to get rid of it, at least in advance, by using the law to keep something from being presented to the electorate," Feeney told the Associated Press.
Nevertheless, California Attorney General Kamala Harris has taken the unusual step of asking a court in Sacramento to throw out the anti-gay proposal.
"From a purely legal point of view, there is zero point of doing this," Feeney said in a New York Times interview. "What we are seeing here is more of the political side of this. She is being pressed by gay rights activists; she's wanting to be supportive."
Floyd Feeney is the Homer G. and Ann Berryhill Angelo Professor of Law at the UC Davis School of Law and the winner of the Law School's Distinguished Teaching Award in 1986 and 2008. The author of seven books and numerous articles, Feeney has received awards from the National Institute of Justice and the California Probation, Parole, and Correctional Association, and is a nationally recognized scholar on election law.