California Supreme Court decides that Prop 8 sponsors have standing to defend it.

The Court was responding to a state law question referred to it by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering whether the ban on same-sex marriage violates the federal Constitution.

The Supreme Court was emphatic that it would "undermine" the California ballot initiative process if the governor and attorney general can trump the voters by declining to defend such laws in the courts.

"The inability of the official proponents of an initiative measure to appeal a trial court judgment invalidating the measure, when the public officials who ordinarily would file such an appeal decline to do so, would significantly undermine the initiative power," Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye wrote for the [unanimous] court....

"This frees up the 9th Circuit to go ahead and decide the constitutional issues on the merits," said Theodore Olson, former U.S. Solicitor General during the Bush administration. "We're anxious to get to a decision on the merits that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional."

ADDED: Here's the California Supreme Court opinion (PDF). The California Supreme Court observes that the 9th Circuit saw the federal issue of standing as hinging on a state law question: whether "the official proponents of an initiative have authority under California law to assert the state‘s interest in the initiative measure‘s validity." The California Supreme Court's opinion stresses the nature of the initiative power, which was adopted "as one means of restoring the people‘s rightful control over their government":

The initiative power would be significantly impaired if there were no one to assert the state‘s interest in the validity of the measure when elected officials decline to defend it in court or to appeal a judgment invalidating the measure. Under article II, section 8 and the Elections Code, the official proponents of an initiative measure have a unique relationship to the voter-approved measure that makes them especially likely to be reliable and vigorous advocates for the measure and to be so viewed by those whose votes secured the initiative‘s enactment into law....

Thus, regardless of the initiative‘s effect on their personal and particularized legally protected interests, the official proponents are the most logical and appropriate choice to assert the state‘s interest in the validity of the initiative measure on behalf of the electors who voted in favor of the measure....

[E]ven though the official proponents of an initiative measure are not public officials the role they play in asserting the state‘s interest in the validity of an initiative measure in this judicial setting does not threaten the democratic process or the proper governance of the state, but, on the contrary, serves to safeguard the unique elements and integrity of the initiative process.

"The Case Against Referendums: From Greece to California, They Always End Up Undermining Democracy."

David Bell in TNR:

Modern states are far too large and complex for direct democracy. Since it would be hugely impractical for the people, as a whole, to decide on everything from the size of foreign aid budgets to new environmental regulations, they delegate the business of government to elected representatives....

[I]n practice bodies of elected representatives so often seem to devolve into corrupt, complacent and long-lasting oligarchies. Anger at the shenanigans of the political class has helped keep the old suspicions alive right down to the present day, and has led, in democracies across the world, to countless institutional schemes designed to keep elected representatives in check: “imperative mandates” (detailed orders for how to vote in parliament, drawn up and approved by constituents); term limits; making the job part-time; judicial oversight; etc. The single most popular such scheme, however, has been the referendum....

[But referendums] take relatively technical issues away from legislators who have the time and expertise to deal with them, and give them to voters who do not....

[Referendums] tie the hands of legislators in potentially destructive ways....

[R]eferendums tarnish the legitimacy of legislators by subjecting their work to direct popular veto, and therefore casting it as a less genuine expression of popular sovereignty—despite the fact that the routine functioning of a democratic constitution is the most important expression of this sovereignty.

By the way, the U.S. Constitution prescribes the specific method for legislating and amending the Constitution, and that excludes the referendum as a check on Congress, but there is also an argument that the state-level referendums violate the U.S. Constitution. In 1912, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it was not the proper role of the courts to give an answer to that particular question of law, and referendums have continued ever since. What a missed opportunity!