Bishop Harry Jackson (Blade file photo by Michael Key)

D.C. files Supreme Court brief defending marriage

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles and other city attorneys have urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to take a case filed by a local minister seeking to overturn the city’s same-sex marriage law.

In a 35-page legal brief filed Dec. 17, the city attorneys argue that the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled correctly earlier this year that the District has authority to prohibit a voter initiative or referendum seeking to overturn the Religious Freedom and Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009.

“This case is not important enough to merit review” by the Supreme Court because it “lacks national importance as it is confined in effect to the District,” Nickles and the other attorneys said in their brief.

The case, known as Jackson v. the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, was initiated by Bishop Harry Jackson and other local opponents of same-sex marriage earlier this year.

The city filed its brief on the last day such a brief could be filed under Supreme Court rules.

Jackson and his allies are seeking to overturn separate rulings by the city’s election board and the D.C. Superior Court and Court of Appeals that the District’s initiative and referendum law doesn’t allow ballot measures that would have the effect of violating the city’s Human Rights Act. The act, among other things, bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Most legal observers say the Supreme Court traditionally defers to state appeals courts –- including the D.C. Court of Appeals — in matters that don’t have national implications. The observers, including local gay rights attorney Mark Levine, have said the high court would be violating its own precedent and possibly showing a sign of bias against same-sex marriage should it rule in favor of Jackson’s petition.

The city’s brief also seeks to refute a claim by Jackson’s attorneys that the Supreme Court can take on a case without national significance if the lower court ruling is reached through an “egregious error.”

“In fact, the appeals court decision is correct” and the “egregious error” argument doesn’t apply, Nickles and his team of city lawyers argue in the brief.

Jackson’s petition to the high court, known as a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari,” calls for the court to take on the case and involves a decision by the nine justices to accept or reject that request. Should they accept the case, the justices would then review it on its merits through oral and written arguments and issue a separate ruling.

Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the ACLU’s D.C. area office, said the Supreme Court is likely to decide whether to accept or reject the Jackson case in January.

LOU CHIBBARO JR.

Mova closes temporarily; Straits of Malaya to shut down

The Logan Circle gay bar Mova at 1435 P St., N.W., closed its doors Sunday night following a weekend-long “moving party” that owner Babak Movahedi said highlighted his plans for reopening the bar in the spring of 2011 at an as-yet-undisclosed location in D.C.

Meanwhile, the gay-owned restaurant Straits of Malaya, which has operated at 1836 18th St., N.W., since 1989, will be closing permanently following its New Year’s Eve dinner servings, according to owner Lawrence “Larry” Tan.

Tan and his partner, Ken Megill, will retain the adjoining gay bar Larry’s Lounge, which they also own, while the two devote most of their time operating a non-profit group they founded to help underprivileged children and senior citizens in need in Malaysia. Another restaurant with different owners will soon open in the space currently occupied by Straits of Malaya.

Tan and Megill announced the official launch of their charitable group Hope Peace Love Compassion Charity (HPLCC) in last week’s Blade and in literature distributed at the restaurant and lounge. A detailed description of the organization’s mission, including information on how to make a donation to help it carry out its charitable work, can be found at HYPERLINK “http://hplcc.org/”hplcc.org.

Tan, a native of Malaysia, immigrated to Canada at age 22 and worked his way through college, obtaining an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree in business administration before moving to Washington in 1984. He later opened Straits of Malaya as one of the country’s first restaurants specializing in Malaysian cuisine.

“HPLCC will work directly with the youth and seniors, many of whom are housed in orphanages and other institutions, to provide opportunities for these children and seniors that the homes and families cannot provide,” a statement on the group’s website says.

Mova’s parent company Logan Circle Spectrum LLC, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy earlier this year, is now out of bankruptcy, Movahedi told the Blade Monday.

“We are going to reopen — definitely,” he said, adding that he might be ready to announce Mova’s new location “in a couple of months.”

LOU CHIBBARO JR.

Lanier urged to enlist outside help in Wone murder case

Three gay bloggers who have chronicled the Robert Wone murder case for more than three years are urging D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier to enlist the services of an “elite group of the world’s top criminologists, forensic experts and investigators” to help solve the murder.

The Who Murdered Robert Wone bloggers want Lanier to invite the Philadelphia-based Vidocq Society to review all of the evidence gathered by D.C. homicide detectives in the August 2006 Wone murder. The bloggers say they are hopeful that the society’s team of experts can shed new light on a case that has confounded D.C. police for more than six years.

According to a recent report on the Vidocq Society by ABC’s “20/20” program, the group’s members, who come from 17 states and several foreign countries, have solved as many as 90 percent of the 300 “cold case” murders they have investigated.

D.C. police charged three gay men, in whose house Wone was found stabbed to death, with conspiracy and evidence tampering in connection with the case. But they have yet to charge anyone with Wone’s murder.

And the three men – Joseph Price, Victor Zaborsky, and Dylan Ward – were found not guilty by a D.C. Superior Court judge, who said the evidence presented by police and prosecutors was insufficient for a conviction.

In a Nov. 24 letter to Lanier, Who Murdered Robert Wone spokesperson Doug Johnson said the eclectic members of the Vidocq Society could provide the boost D.C. police need to crack the case.

“We understand that this case is exactly the sort that members of Vidocq look for – a senseless homicide that has gone ice-cold, and their pro bono assistance to local law enforcement can help resolve,” Johnson said. “It’s our deep hope that you will take the Society up on their offer to help.”

As of this week, Lanier has not responded to the bloggers’ letter.

LOU CHIBBARO JR.

Gray monitoring alleged anti-trans assault by cop

D.C. Mayor-elect Vincent Gray is monitoring a police investigation into a Dec. 1 incident in which a transgender woman says she was assaulted by an off-duty District police officer, according to Gray spokesperson Doxie McCoy.

Chloe Alexander Moore has charged that Officer Raphael Radon shoved her after calling her anti-trans names around 2 a.m. on Dec. 1 along the 1500 block of K St., N.W. Moore said she squirted the officer — who wore civilian clothes — in the face with pepper spray in self-defense, out of fear that she was in danger of being further assaulted.

Police charged Moore with simple assault against Radon, who Moore said did not reveal his identity as a police officer until after the altercation began. Radon has not been charged in the case. Moore said that after she used the pepper spray and attempted to flee, Radon chased her for two blocks and knocked her to the ground, causing her to suffer back and leg injuries.

Police Chief Cathy Lanier said she ordered the police Internal Affairs Bureau to investigate the incident.

“We’ve made inquires about the incident in light of the issues raised,” McCoy said. “Mayor-elect Gray is sensitive to the concerns of the GLBT community and is fully committed to ending sexual identity bias. MPD’s Internal Affairs has assured us that there will be a thorough, fair and impartial investigation, and as their review is in the early stages, we will await the findings,” McCoy said.

The D.C. Trans Coalition has said police appear to have violated a general police order pertaining to how police should handle cases involving transgender people.

“Medical attention was apparently not provided promptly, and the use of degrading, trans-phobic language is expressly forbidden,” said Trans Coalition attorney Alison Gill.

Moore is scheduled to appear in court for a status hearing on her assault case on Jan. 3.

LOU CHIBBARO JR.

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles and other city attorneys have urged the U.S. Supreme Court not to take a case filed by a local minister seeking to overturn the city’s same-sex marriage law.

In a 35-page legal brief filed Dec. 17, the city attorneys argue that the D.C. Court of Appeals ruled correctly earlier this year that the District has authority to prohibit a voter initiative or referendum seeking to overturn the Religious Freedom and Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009.

“This case is not important enough to merit review” by the Supreme Court because it “lacks national importance as it is confined in effect to the District,” Nickles and the other attorneys said in their brief.

The case, known as Jackson v. the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, was initiated by Bishop Harry Jackson and other local opponents of same-sex marriage earlier this year.

The city filed its brief on the last day such a brief could be filed under Supreme Court rules.

Jackson and his allies are seeking to overturn separate rulings by the city’s election board and the D.C. Superior Court and Court of Appeals that the District’s initiative and referendum law doesn’t allow ballot measures that would have the effect of violating the city’s Human Rights Act. The act, among other things, bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Most legal observers say the Supreme Court traditionally defers to state appeals courts –- including the D.C. Court of Appeals — in matters that don’t have national implications. The observers, including local gay rights attorney Mark Levine, have said the high court would be violating its own precedent and possibly showing a sign of bias against same-sex marriage should it rule in favor of Jackson’s petition.

The city’s brief also seeks to refute a claim by Jackson’s attorneys that the Supreme Court can take on a case without national significance if the lower court ruling is reached through an “egregious error.”

“In fact, the appeals court decision is correct” and the “egregious error” argument doesn’t apply, Nickles and his team of city lawyers argue in the brief.

Jackson’s petition to the high court, known as a Petition for a Writ of Certiorari,” calls for the court to take on the case and involves a decision by the nine justices to accept or reject that request. Should they accept the case, the justices would then review it on its merits through oral and written arguments and issue a separate ruling.

Arthur Spitzer, legal director of the ACLU’s D.C. area office, said the Supreme Court is likely to decide whether to accept or reject the Jackson case in January.

Four people were arrested this week in connection with the murder of Brian Betts, the gay principal of Shaw Middle School in D.C. (Photo by Bel Perez Gabilondo; courtesy of D.C. Public Schools)

Three 18-year-old men who allegedly met gay D.C. middle school principal Brian Betts through a telephone sex chat line were arrested this week in connection with his shooting death, police said.

Alante Saunders, whom Montgomery County Police said had no fixed address, and Sharif Tau Lancaster, who lives along the 5300 block of Fifth Street, N.W., in D.C., were charged Monday with first-degree murder, armed robbery and the use of a handgun in a felony crime of violence.

Deonatra Q. Gray, who lives along the 1300 block of Southview Drive in Oxon Hill, Md., was charged Tuesday with first-degree murder, one count of armed robbery, and one count of conspiracy to commit armed robbery.

“While the motive of the crime is still being investigated, we believe that it is most likely going to be robbery,” said Montgomery County Police Chief J. Thomas Manger during a news conference Monday.

Betts, 42, was found shot to death April 15 in a second floor bedroom of his house in Silver Spring, Md. Police said they found his fully clothed body after colleagues at D.C.’s Shaw Middle School, where he worked as principal, became concerned when Betts failed to report to work.

On the day they discovered Betts’ body, investigators disclosed they found no signs of a forced entry into Betts’ house, leading them to believe he invited his killer or killers inside.

Also charged in the case was Artura Otey Williams, 46, Lancaster’s mother. Police she was arrested Monday at the home on Fifth Street, N.W., on charges related to her alleged use of one of several credit cards taken from Betts’ house. She was not charged with the murder itself.

In a related development, D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles separately disclosed Monday that Lancaster and Sanders had recently escaped from a juvenile home where they were in custody by the city’s Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services. Nickles did not say the criminal offense or offenses the two youths had been charged with to land them in DYRS custody.

Manger, when asked by a reporter at the Montgomery County Police news conference whether the chat line through which Betts allegedly met his killers catered solely to gay clientele, said, “I’m not aware of that. I don’t know.”

He said he also didn’t know the name of the chat line, saying only, “It’s been described as a sex chat line, a social networking chat line.” But he noted that investigators believe Betts met one or all of the three 18-year-old men implicated in the case through the chat line on the night he was murdered.

After the news conference, police spokesperson Capt. Paul Sparks described the system as a “national chat line” linked to an Internet site. Sparks said he didn’t know the name of the chat line or Internet site.

Many gay-oriented sex chat lines are advertised in local and national gay publications and web sites.

Manger’s news conference outside Montgomery County Police headquarters in Rockville came the same day that teams of police officers and detectives in Montgomery County, Prince George’s County and D.C. used search warrants to conduct early-morning raids on four residences where they believed evidence and suspects in the case were located.

Manger said Williams was arrested during a search of her house on the 5300 block of Fifth Street, N.W.

He said Saunders, Lancaster and the third 18-year-old man were taken into custody during the search of an apartment along the 1300 block of Southview Drive in Oxon Hill, Md., which is located in Prince George’s County.

Among the items found during the Southview Drive search was Betts’ wallet, which was in possession of one of the men implicated in the case, Manger said. He noted that police found a receipt in the wallet for a pair of Nike shoes that were purchased using one of Betts’ credit cards shortly after the murder.

Police also used warrants Monday to search residences along the 4300 block of Third Street, S.E., in D.C., and along the 2400 block of Southern Avenue in Temple Hills, Md., in Prince George’s County.

Neighbors reported seeing police remove items from the residences, including several large bags containing items from the home on Fifth Street, N.W., which is near the border of D.C. and Silver Spring.

According to Manger and statements released Monday by Montgomery County Police, investigators began piecing together evidence linking the murder to the arrested suspects less than a week after Betts’ body was discovered.

The first break came when investigators discovered that Williams had used one of several credit cards stolen from Betts’ house on the night of the murder to purchase $111 worth of groceries from a Giant supermarket in Silver Spring on April 16, the day after Betts’ body was found. The Giant is located less than two miles from Betts’ house. Police said Williams was recorded using the credit card on a video surveillance camera at the store.

Police charged her with two counts of knowingly receiving a stolen credit card with the intent to use it, attempted theft of items less than $1,000 in value, and attempted fraudulent credit card use. She was being held in D.C. while awaiting extradition to Montgomery County.

“Lancaster was identified through fingerprints obtained from the crime scene inside Betts’ residence,” says one of two statements released Monday by Montgomery County Police.

“Through the course of the investigation, it was confirmed that Lancaster has no known ties to Betts,” says the statements. “Saunders, also with no known ties to the victim, was identified through fingerprints obtained inside and outside the vehicle belonging to Betts, a 2007 Nissan Xterra, which was stolen from his residence on the night of the murder.”

D.C. police recovered the vehicle April 17, two days after Betts was found dead in his house along the 3900 block of Fourth Street, S.E.

“It was determined that several credit cards belonging to Betts were stolen from the residence,” one of the police statements says. “The continuing investigation revealed that Betts’ credit cards were used to make purchases throughout the area, including Silver Spring, Oxon Hill, Hyattsville, Northwest and Southeast Washington, D.C.”

The statement notes that surveillance photos show Lancaster, Saunders and Williams using the credit cards.

“This remains still a very active investigation,” Manger said during his news conference.
In response to reporters’ questions, he said he didn’t know whether Lancaster, Saunders and Gray used the chat line to rob or harm other people. He also told reporters that he didn’t know what promoted one of the suspects to allegedly shoot Betts to death if the motive was robbery.

“The interviews have not been completed, so we don’t have that information,” he said.

Sparks, the police spokesperson, said more arrests could be made in the case.

Officials with the D.C. group Gays & Lesbians Opposing Violence have said that law enforcement agencies in the D.C. area should issue a public alert about criminals targeting gays for robberies and assaults through online social networking sites or phone chat lines.

GLOV co-chairs Kelly Pickard and Joe Montoni said during the group’s regular monthly meeting in April, one week after the Betts murder, that plans were made to distribute flyers and other alerts urging members of the LGBT community to exert caution when using such sites or chat lines.

On Dec. 27, gay D.C. resident Anthony Perkins, 29, was shot to death in his car in Southeast D.C. by a suspect who met him through a phone chat line, according to D.C. police and the U.S. Attorney’s office. Authorities have so far declined to name the chat line.

D.C. police charged 20-year-old Antwan Holcomb with first-degree murder while armed in connection with Perkins’ death.

And in January, gay Maryland resident Gordon Rivers, 47, was fatally shot inside his car while it was parked on Naylor Road in Southeast D.C. Police later arrested 17-year-old William Wren of Southeast D.C. and 22-year-old Anthony Hager of Temple Hills, Md., on murder charges in connection with the case.

D.C. police said in an arrest affidavit that Wren admitted knowing Rivers before the murder and having called Rivers by phone to arrange a meeting with him on Naylor Road, intending to rob him.

Police and the U.S. Attorney’s office have declined to disclose how Wren met Rivers, spurring questions as to whether the two met online or through a phone chat line.

The District needs an independent attorney general responsible to the people and not answerable to the mayor. I have been privy to previous administrations’ discussions when they tried to recruit and vet a person for the position that used to be called the Corporation Counsel. We have since changed the name of that position to Attorney General but now is the time to make that an elected position.

It is time to make that office independent. Currently, even with the name change, the person occupying that office is still part of the mayor’s cabinet and answers directly to the mayor. It would be a first step to giving that office the right to control criminal trials in D.C. as well.

This is not a criticism of the work of Peter Nickles, presently occupying the office. In fact the LGBT community appreciates his strong stand in defending the Board of Elections & Ethics decision to declare a referendum or an initiative inappropriate in the case of marriage equality. But we had little idea of where the AG would come down on this issue and what his personal views on marriage equality were. We assumed that the mayor wouldn’t appoint someone who disagrees with him on such a basic issue but stranger things have happened. That is just one reason why we in the LGBT community should care about this office. There are others. Issues of concern include contracts that the city has with Catholic Charities or other religious organizations that may come into question after marriage equality becomes law.

There are issues surrounding the contracting related to HIV/AIDS that the recent articles in the Washington Post pointed out. There is the apparent waste of scarce AIDS funding that could end up in the courts. In this case the contracts were awarded by one mayoral agency and the attorney general’s office, another mayoral agency, will be investigating them. The mayor’s office will be investigating itself. This could lead to whitewashing the issue because there is no way we can be assured that the final report is totally independent and that the result of the AG’s investigation won’t be slanted in order to make the mayor look good.

I am not suggesting that Nickles would do that. But we have no guarantee that some future AG wouldn’t. There are often cases where the AG’s office has to investigate impropriety in another agency and they have to defend decisions of city agencies in court. The current battle with the courts over putting mayoral agencies into receivership is one example.

Another possible conflict has to do with recent contracts that were entered into by the city without proper consultation with the Council. The AG suggested that this was an illegal action by the mayor’s office but then began to defend the contracts done that way. Again the contracting was done by the mayor’s office and is being reviewed by the mayor’s office itself. If this were done by an independently elected AG, the people would have more confidence in the outcome of the investigation. In this case, the AG is actually negotiating with the Council on behalf of the mayor.

A major benefit of the direct election of an attorney general is that we will have the same ability to question them on their views on the issues as we do our other elected officials. We will be able to judge for ourselves their backgrounds and abilities.

One of the fears I hear from those opposed to electing an independent AG is that they will make decisions based on looking at a future run for mayor. Well that is part of our electoral process and it will be up to the people whether they would succeed. We have so few elected positions in the District that one more would be welcome. Decisions now made by the appointed AG are every bit as political but rather than being independent and representing the people they are made by a person appointed by the mayor who owes his job to him.

Yes, AG’s have become governors and even cabinet members, like Janet Napolitano. Or Andrew Cuomo, who began in the cabinet, now is an AG and wants to run for governor in New York. But then in D.C. we have had elected officials become mayor, for example Marion Barry and Adrian Fenty, so what is the difference? The scenario of moving to higher office from the AG’s position isn’t really a problem.

The bigger problem for the people of D.C. is to ensure that we have another independent voice representing our interests. An independent AG elected by the people whose views on the issues of the day are known could be that person.

Peter Rosenstein is a D.C.-based LGBT rights and Democratic Party activist.

The closed "men's party" house at 1618 14th St., N.W. (DC Agenda photo by Michael Key)

D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles revealed last week that his office shuttered a sex club for gay men known as the “Men’s Parties” and “D.C. Wrestling Club” as part of a city-wide crackdown on prostitution and other “unlawful sexually oriented activities.”

“The District has worked diligently to bring to light the illegal activities occurring at these unsafe businesses and fought to keep them closed for a safer and peaceful community,” Nickles said in a statement. “As part of this initiative, the District has used and will continue to use every tool at its disposal to make sure such illegal activities will not be tolerated.”

Four other businesses targeted in the crackdown catered to heterosexual clientele. In court papers seeking an injunction to close the Men’s Parties, which operated in a townhouse at 1618 14th St., N.W., Nickles stressed the club was operating as a business without a required business license. The court papers made no allegation that the club was associated with prostitution.

The city launched an investigation into the Men’s Parties’ operations after one of its gay male members died in October after falling and hitting his head on the concrete floor or a metal pipe, according to an account by the club’s owner, David Butler. Police ruled the death an accident, but the Logan Circle Advisory Neighborhood Commission called on the city to close the club on grounds that it was unsafe.

Butler disputes claims that the premises in which he operated were unsafe. He had said he operated the Men’s Parties as a private social club, not a business, and would comply with all city rules. Butler had noted his attorney was challenging the city’s injunction forcing him to close, although he was uncertain whether he could resume the club’s activities.

Opponents of same-sex marriage in the District of Columbia lost their second court challenge in less than a year Thursday when a Superior Court judge ruled that a voter initiative seeking to ban such marriages cannot be placed on the ballot.

Judge Judith Macaluso ruled that the D.C. Board of Elections & Ethics acted properly in November when it rejected a proposed initiative calling for banning same-sex marriages in the city.

The election board said seeking a gay marriage ban was an impermissible subject for a ballot measure because it would violate the city’s Human Rights Act, which bans discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“Today’s decision affirms the District’s effort to make our city open and inclusive,” said D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty, who signed a same-sex marriage bill last month shortly after the City Council approved it.

City officials and Capitol Hill observes believe the bill will become law the first week in March, when it’s expected to clear a required congressional review of 30 legislative days.

“Thanks to the Superior Court, this historic legislation is now one crucial step closer to being implemented,“ said D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles, who filed the city’s court brief opposing the ballot initiative.

“Many District residents have waited decades for full marriage rights,” he said. “Their wait will soon be over.”

The case on which Macaluso ruled, Harry Jackson Jr. v. District of Columbia Board of Elections & Ethics, is named for Bishop Harry Jackson, the Beltsville, Md., minister who is leading efforts to ban same-sex marriage in D.C.

Another Superior Court judge ruled against Jackson last year when he filed papers with the election board for a voter referendum to overturn a separate law that authorized the city to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions.

Similar to Thursday’s ruling, the earlier ruling upheld an election board decision rejecting Jackson’s proposed referendum on grounds that it would violate the city’s Human Rights Act.

Among those who signed on as co-plaintiffs with Jackson in the case decided Thursday were Rev. Walter Fauntroy, the city’s former congressional delegate; Ward 5 Advisory Neighborhood Commissioner Robert King; and Rev. Anthony Evans, a D.C. minister.

Attorneys representing Jackson and the other plaintiffs argued in court papers that the right of citizens to propose initiatives and referenda was established as an amendment to the congressionally approved D.C. City Charter. They noted that the restriction used by the city to disqualify initiatives and referenda that would violate the city’s Human Rights Act was established by a regular law passed by the City Council aimed at implementing the City Charter amendment.

According to Jackson and his attorneys, the Council’s restriction on an initiative or referendum seeking to ban same-sex marriage violates the City Charter, which created the initiative and referenda process without such a restriction.

In her ruling Thursday, Macaluso said the City Charter Amendment in question was passed by the City Council before being ratified by Congress. She said it gave the Council full authority to carry out the initiative and referenda process through implementing legislation.

“The most reasonable interpretation of events is that [the] Council … knew what it intended when it directed itself ‘to adopt such acts as are necessary to carry out the purpose of this [charter amendment ]’and that this intention included protection of minorities from the possibility of discriminatory initiatives,” Macaluso says in her ruling.

“Judge Macaluso applied the law impartially in this case, recognizing the D.C. Council’s right to define the initiative process consistent with the D.C. Charter,” said Tom Williamson, one of a team of attorneys who represented same-sex couples in a friend of the court brief supporting the city’s position in the case.

“The decision upholds the Council’s right to broadly protect human rights for all District residents,” said Williamson, who is with the D.C. law firm Covington & Burling, which is providing pro bono legal counsel to the same-sex couples.

Jackson and his fellow plaintiffs in the case could not be immediately reached for comment. They have said in the past that they would likely appeal a decision against them by Macaluso.

But some legal experts, including Williamson, have said Jackson most likely would not be able to appeal the case beyond the D.C. Court of Appeals to the federal courts, including the Supreme Court, because it doesn’t involve a federal constitutional issue.

Thirty-seven Republican members of the House of Representatives and two GOP U.S. senators had filed a separate friend of the court, or amicus, brief backing Jackson’s position in the case.

The GOP lawmakers are expected to take steps through congressional action later this year to overturn the city’s same-sex marriage bill after it becomes law in March. Same-sex marriage supporters, including national LGBT groups such as the Human Rights Campaign, have said they are hopeful that the Democratic controlled Congress will kill any attempt to overturn the marriage law.

“This second, back-to-back ruling by the D.C. Superior Court is an overwhelming victory for fairness, the rule of law and the protection of all D.C. residents against discrimination,” said Joe Solmonese, HRC’s president. “D.C. has the right to govern itself and make its own laws without the interference of 39 Republican members of Congress more interested in scoring cheap political points than in the everyday lives of D.C. residents.”

The Whitman-Walker Clinic has joined D.C. Council member David Catania (I-At Large) and city Attorney General Peter Nickles in expressing caution over how and when the city should implement a 1998 law that legalizes medical marijuana in the District.

Congress last week ended its nine-year ban on allowing the law to take effect when it approved a D.C. appropriations bill that didn’t include a rider blocking the law. District voters approved the law in a 1998 ballot initiative that passed with 69 percent of the vote.

“More than anything else, this is regarded as a very favorable turn of events,” said Thomas Kujawski, an official with the National Association for People With AIDS.

Kujawski said recent studies have shown that marijuana is especially helpful in alleviating side effects from powerful antiretroviral drugs used by AIDS patients, such as nausea and a painful nerve condition called peripheral neuropathy.

Catania, who chairs the Council’s Committee on Health, has said he favors legal use of marijuana for medical purposes, but believes the Council and the city’s Department of Health should carefully craft implementing rules before rushing to put the law into effect.

Nickles told the Washington Post last week that he has asked his staff to review whether the nine-year lag time since voters approved the law would prevent it from withstanding a legal challenge.

On a separate issue, Nickles and D.C. Council Chair Vincent Gray (D-At Large) said the city’s Home Rule charter requires the city to submit the law to Congress for a required review of 30 legislative days, just as all new D.C. laws must be subjected to such a review.

But D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.), disputed that view, saying Congress’s decision to lift its hold on the law amounted to a tacit approval, and the 30-day review would be an unnecessary redundancy. Congress blocked the law, known as Ballot Initiative 59, before the city had a chance to submit it for the normal congressional review.

Other city hall observers noted that while Gray and Norton hash out whether to send the law to Capitol Hill for congressional review, city officials were quietly expressing concern over whether the city government or private non-profit groups should take the lead in cultivating and distributing marijuana for medical purposes.

According to the text of Initiative 59, “All seriously ill individuals have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes” when a licensed physician determines it’s necessary for treatment and prescribes its use.

The law says that residents of the city “may organize and operate non-for-profit corporations for the purpose of cultivating, purchasing, and distributing marijuana exclusively for the medical use of patients.” It says the director of the D.C. Department of Consumer & Regulatory Affairs shall arrange for such non-profit corporations to be exempt from taxes that for-profit corporations normally must pay.

When asked if the Whitman-Walker Clinic, which serves as the city’s largest treatment facility for people with HIV and AIDS, would consider prescribing medical marijuana for its patients, Clinic spokesperson Chip Lewis told DC Agenda that it was too soon to make such a decision.

“Whitman-Walker Clinic believes that everyone living with HIV/AIDS or other chronic conditions should have access to legal medications under a physician’s care,” Lewis said. “If this law does take effect, we will have to do some thoughtful and careful planning, looking at current standards of care, before we could implement any program.”

Currently, medical marijuana is legal in Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington state.

Kujawski pointed to a study reported in the February 2007 edition of the medical journal Neurology, which found that smoked marijuana was “well tolerated” and “effectively relieved chronic neuropathic pain from HIV-associated sensory neuropathy.”

He said the condition typically causes tingling or burning sensations in the limbs of AIDS patients. Experts aren’t sure if the condition is caused by HIV itself or is brought on by various antiretroviral drugs used to treat HIV.

“Anything that is going to result in improved health outcomes for individuals and/or anything that’s going to help support their adherence to their medical treatment regimens, we’re highly supportive of,” he said.

D.C. gay and AIDS activist Wayne Turner and his late domestic partner, Steve Michael, who died of AIDS months before Initiative 59 came before voters, have been credited with starting efforts to place the issue on the ballot. Turner was among the lead campaign organizers for the initiative.

He praised the Democratic controlled Congress for removing its hold on the law and has called on the city government to put the law in place as soon as possible.