Bayer & Borlase

By Mike McKee
RECORDER STAFF WRITER

MONTGOMERY — Support for same-sex marriage was one thing, but getting involved in the debate over a $700 billion bailout of the nation's financial system? No way!

So it went Saturday when the Conference of Delegates of California Bar Associations — a group of lawyers of all political persuasions from across the state — met during the State Bar’s annual meeting.

Independent from the State Bar itself, the conference is a nonpartisan organization that debates everything from the hot topics of the day to minor procedural changes in the law. While the goal is to influence and inspire legislation implementing many of their proposals, the delegates, usually numbering in the hundreds, also take stands on major political issues.

Such was the case on Saturday when the delegates overwhelmingly voted to oppose Proposition 8, the Nov. 4 ballot measure that would amend the state Constitution to limit marriage to heterosexual couples. Minutes later, the delegates turned around and voted overwhelmingly against asking Congress to hold “full and open hearings” on bailout efforts, instead opting to take a wait-and-see attitude. The House of Representatives on Monday voted against the bailout plan as it stood.

During sessions on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, conference delegates also weighed in on the death penalty, arbitration, dog-fighting laws and many other issues.

No topic, however, was more eagerly anticipated by attendees than the delegates’ debate on same-sex marriage.

James Brosnahan, of San Francisco’s Morrison & Foerster, led the charge, arguing vigorously in favor of keeping “hate” out of the state Constitution.

“There is not enough love in this world,” he said. “And … the government needs to get out of the way.” “The pursuit of happiness is what we are talking about here,” Brosnahan added. “When

you are not recognized as equal, that happiness is illusory'"

Alan Ramos, speaking for the Bar Association of San Francisco, which sponsored, along with Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom, the resolution opposing Prop 8, got a laugh when he announced he has been married three times. "If my gay and lesbian brothers and sisters want to get married," he said, "I wisht them the best."

On a serious note, though, Ramos called Prop 8 an :assault on the Constitution" and

When the vote was taken, nearly everyone in the packed room held up the yellow slip of paper that signified support for same-sex marriage and opposition to Prop 8. Fewer than 10 delegates voted the other way.

said it concerned him “that the will of the majority can abrogate equal protection.”

When the vote was taken, nearly everyone in the packed room held up the yellow slip of paper that signified support for same-sex marriage and opposition to Prop 8. Fewer than 10 delegates voted the other way.

One opponent, Stephen Holzer, a partner with Encino’s Lewitt, Hackman, Shapiro, Marshall & Harlan, left the room and didn’t cast a vote because, he said, he “couldn’t take it any more.” He said he backs Prop 8 and felt it was “totally inappropriate for a body representing the lawyers of California — including thousands of moderates and conservatives — to get involved in social issues over which

good lawyers can disagree.”

Holzer said he would never consider bringing a proposal to support Prop 8 to the Conference of Delegates because attorneys have no particular expertise that entitles them to offer opinions on such highly charged political issues.

Conservatives are “gradually being pushed out” of groups such as the Conference of Delegates and the American Bar Association, he said: “You’re basically being told that if you’re a conservative, you don’t belong here.”

The resolution on the Bush administration’s financial bailout, authored by Kenneth Petrulis, a partner with L.A.’s Goodson Wachtel and Petrulis, called for “proper protections for consumers and other victims of abusive lending practices” and assurances “that federal funds are not used to benefit private individuals and corporations.”

“What we are being asked to do is buy a pig in a poke — a $700 billion pig,” Petrulis argued to the crowd. “You get something and you don’t know what you are getting. All you know is you’re throwing money at it.”

Surprisingly, the delegates — who are largely left-leaning politically — didn’t want to have anything to do with the proposal.

“We’re being rushed to judgment on specifics we know nothing about,” said Matthew St. George Jr. of the Los Angeles city attorney’s office. “We don’t have that kind of expertise.”

“Even the candidates for president,” he added, “knew better than to get into the details [during their Friday night debate].”

Charles Bird, an appellate lawyer with San Diego’s Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps, parodied Petrulis’ “pig in a poke” comment in opposing the resolution.

“No one should ever try to teach a pig to sing,” he said. “It does no good and it makes the pig angry.”

Over the weekend conference delegates also:

• Called on state legislators to limit the death penalty to individuals who have committed more than one murder.

“It’s a fall-back position [in case] we can’t

get the Legislature to eliminate the death penalty,” San Francisco lawyer Frank Leidman said.

• Approved a resolution to amend state law to prevent jurors who oppose the death penalty from being excluded from capital-case juries.

• Rejected a proposal calling for criminal penalties that treat spectators of dog fights the same as those who participate actively.

• Refused to seek an amendment to court rules that would clarify when attorneys or their firms are disqualified when conflicts arise.

• Rejected a proposal that seeks to amend state law in order to allow individuals to appeal a court’s order compelling arbitration. Currently, appeals are allowed only when a court denies a motion to compel arbitration.

• Approved a resolution asking legislators to allow employees of the University of California the right to sue over whistle-blower complaints that aren’t addressed to their satisfaction. The resolution, introduced by Heather Borlase, a partner with San Francisco’s Bayer & Borlase, was in response to the California Supreme Court’s July 31 ruling in Milosy v.

Regents of the University of California, 08 C.D.O.S. 9892, which held that UC was immune to such suits. In that ruling, the justices urged that the Legislature change that. “It was a near-unanimous vote,” Borlase said Monday, “and we’re looking forward to seeing it up in the Legislature and having it enacted into law.”

Reporter Mike McKee’s e-mail address is .