Attorney General Jerry Brown's legal challenge to California's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage marks the first time that the state's top lawyer has refused to defend a newly enacted ballot measure since 1964 - another epic discrimination case that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
In November 1964, an overwhelming 65 percent majority of the state's voters approved Proposition 14, a constitutional amendment that overturned a fair-housing law and allowed racial discrimination in property sales and rentals.
Attorney General Thomas Lynch - newly appointed to succeed Stanley Mosk, a Prop. 14 opponent who had just been named to the state Supreme Court - concluded the initiative violated U.S. constitutional standards and left private lawyers representing sponsors as its sole defenders in court.
The state Supreme Court - minus Mosk, who removed himself from the case - overturned Prop. 14 in 1966, and the U.S. Supreme Court followed suit in 1967. Lynch filed written arguments urging the nation's high court to rule the measure unconstitutional.
Brown personally opposed Proposition 8, the initiative restoring the ban on gay and lesbian marriages that the state Supreme Court had struck down in May, but said the day after the Nov. 4 election that he planned to defend it in court.

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