Olson & Boies: Stay Out Of Our Lawsuit

On Friday, Ted Olson and David Boies filed briefs demanding that LGBT rights groups and the city of San Francisco not be allowed to join their federal suit to overturn Prop 8.

Chad Griffin, president of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, which launched the suit, sent a letter in July accusing the advocacy groups of undermining the case in public and private comments and asking them not to intervene. Nevertheless, the groups filed a motion to intervene that month, arguing that they represented a more diverse community of same-sex couples than did the two couples represented in the suit. San Francisco also moved to intervene. Olson and Boies suggested Friday that if the court allowed any intervention, it should grant San Francisco's request. But the other advocacy groups, the lawyers argued, should be limited at most to roles as "friends of the court," - allowed to offer opinions, but shut out from decisions on how the case should be pursued. "Having declined to bring their own federal challenge to Prop. 8," they wrote, the advocacy groups "should not be allowed to usurp Plaintiffs' lawsuit."

The LGBT rights groups seeking to join the suit are the National Center for Lesbian Rights, the ACLU, and Lambda Legal.