Federal judge in Prop 8 challenge has mixed LGBT record

The Alliance Defense Fund, which is seeking to argue in support of Prop 8 in federal court next month, has a well-known and predictable track record against LGBT rights. That of the judge who will hear initial arguments, however, is something of a mixed bag.

District Court Judge Vaughan R. Walker was involved in the lawsuit against the Gay Games in 1982. He more recently ruled in favor of an Oakland suit to take down a sign that was seen as creating a hostile work place for LGBT city workers. And Theodore Olsen and David Boies, the attorneys who filed suit against Prop 8 in federal court, will ask Walker for a preliminary injunction to suspend Prop 8.

Walker, 65 and unmarried, is a native of Illinois with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Michigan and a law degree from Stanford. Then-President George H. W. Bush appointed Walker to the Northern District of California in 1989. And he became its chief judge in 2004 after he succeeded Marilyn Hall Patel.