Asserting the Court's continuing commitment to subject laws affecting sexual orientation to "strict scrutiny," the decision characterized Proposition 8 as merely "carving out a narrow and limited exception" to the state's protection of same-sex couples, reserving the official designation of the term 'marriage' for the union of opposite-sex couples as a matter of state constitutional law."

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Whereas in the earlier ruling, the Court had emphasized the significance of the word marriage, in this ruling the Court minimized its importance, in effect reducing the dispute to a matter of vocabulary.

The tone of the majority decision was curiously apologetic. Indeed, in emphasizing that domestic partnerships are the equivalent of marriage in all but the name, the ruling may have strengthened the domestic partnership law, making it possible for same-sex couples, for example, to refuse to testify against each other and claim other rights that married couples assume.

The majority decision let stand the 18,000 existing marriages because, the Court said, Proposition 8 did not include language specifically saying it was retroactive.

In a spirited dissent, Justice Carlos Moreno deplored the majority ruling, saying that Proposition 8 "strikes at the core of the promise of equality that underlies our California Constitution." Upholding it, he said, "places at risk the state constitutional rights of all disfavored minorities."

The ruling was bitterly assailed by proponents of marriage equality and sparked a number of protests and demonstrations. Some organizations began the process of collecting signatures to qualify an amendment restoring marriage equality in California in 2010.

Soon after the announcement of the California Supreme Court's decision, veteran litigators Theodore Olson and David Boies, who had opposed each other in the bitterly contested Gore v. Bush case that decided the 2000 Presidential election, announced that they would take the battle for marriage equality to federal court.

Although their announcement was greeted less than enthusiastically by some gay legal organizations and experts, who judged the move risky and premature, the attorneys nevertheless seem committed to pursue the suit, which argues that Proposition 8 violates federal equal protection and due process guarantees.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the Boies-Olson suit is that it may make the cause of marriage equality less partisan than it has previously been perceived, since Olson, a former Solicitor General, is a prominent conservative Republican, while Boies is a well-connected Democrat.