Discrimination Now Legal in California

Today the California Supreme Court stated that it was legal for the people of the state to put a proposition onto the ballot that discriminates against protected minorities and that the resulting law would be entirely valid.

It was generally an expected result (though, perhaps, we hoped otherwise). The California Supreme Court has, for years, supported the limitation of rights for prisoners and ex-convicts, and though they're surely not a protected minority in the same way, it offered considerable precedent for the majority being allowed to take away the rights of the minority in this state. Today's decision just codified and expanded the way things have been done since the Reagan years.

But if I was a minority in California I would now be very, very afraid*.

Edit: Here's a great analysis of the case:
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2009/5/26/103947/856/17#c17

Including some discussion of the one justice who gets it:

In his concurring and dissenting opinion, Justice Moreno concludes that Proposition 8 is not a lawful amendment to the California Constitution because it alters the equal protection clause to deny same-sex couples equal treatment, explaining that "requiring discrimination against a minority group on the basis of a suspect classification strikes at the core of the promise of equality that underlies our California Constitution and thus ‘represents such a drastic and far-reaching change in the nature and operation of our governmental structure that it must be considered a "revision" of the state Constitution rather than a mere "amendment" thereof.’ " Justice Moreno points out that the equal protection clause is "inherently countermajoritarian" and observes that "there is no ‘underlying’ principle more basic to our Constitution than that the equal protection clause protects the fundamental rights of minorities from the will of the majority."

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* And, indeed, I am. Non-hispanic whites became a minority in California in 2001.