Wisconsin governor Scott Walker has decided to stop defending a new domestic partnership registry law that gives same-sex couples a handful of the rights granted to married couples, but that Walker and others believe violates the state constitution.
The Journal Sentinel reports on the motion from Walker against the law, which Democrats adopted in 2009 when they controlled the legislature. Opponents have challenged the law in Dane County circuit court as a violation of the state constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2006 that bans same-sex marriages and, they argue, any substantially similar arrangement.
When Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen refused to defend the domestic partnership registries, former Gov. Jim Doyle, a Democrat replaced by Walker in January, hired an attorney to defend the state.
“Governor Walker, in deference to the legal opinion of the attorney general that the domestic partner registry…is unconstitutional, does not believe the public interest requires a continued defense of this law,” says the brief.
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