The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has become the first federal appellate court to rule explicitly that laws denying equal protection to gays and lesbians are subject to heightened judicial scrutiny — a decision that could have enormous ramifications in civil rights litigation all over the western United States.
The court took that step on Jan. 21 in SmithKline Beecham v. Abbott Laboratories, ruling that gay men and women can’t be removed from juries on the basis of their orientation.
