SACRAMENTO - Equality California (EQCA) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Northern California, Southern California and San Diego announced today the joint sponsorship of a bill that would allow domestic partners and married spouses equal opportunity, regardless of gender, to change their surnames upon marriage or domestic partnership registration.

AB 102, introduced on Jan. 3 by Assemblymember Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, specifies that all Californians have the right to select a surname of their choice when they marry or enter into a domestic partnership. The legislation also requires the California Department of Motor Vehicles to issue a new driver's license or identification card with the new, chosen name upon presentation of a marriage license or certificate of domestic partnership. Six states currently recognize this naming right.

"This bill ensures that the rules regarding changing surnames apply to all Californians equally, regardless of gender or sexual orientation," said EQCA Executive Director Geoff Kors. "Under current law, registered domestic partners must go through a lengthy and costly court process in order to change their names. Whether they are married or registered as domestic partners, all committed couples should have the same right to take a new surname."

California's current domestic partnership laws do not address the issue of taking a new surname, and the state's marriage applications only give female spouses the option to take the husband's surname.

The ACLU of Southern California (ACLU/SC) highlighted this disparity last December when it asked a federal court in Los Angeles to update California law to allow a husband to take his wife's last name by simply stating it on a marriage application.

"AB 102 removes sex discrimination embedded in our laws that makes the family name of a married couple the exclusive province of the husband," said ACLU/SC Legal Director Mark Rosenbaum. "It takes California marriage laws out of the dark ages by abolishing the state's veto over couples' naming choices. Deciding what's in a name is the province of committed couples, not the state."

The ACLU/SC and the law firm of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy filed suit on behalf of Michael Buday and his wife Diana Bijon, who wanted to extend the Bijon family name into another generation. Click here to read the press release.

A county clerk, the DMV and state records office denied Buday's name change request on the couple's marriage applications, leaving them the only option of paying court fees totaling more than $300. The lawsuit is ongoing.

"I believe in a future where all Californians have equal rights," said the bill's author, Assemblymember Ma. "This bill is a first step towards recognizing that both partners in a committed relationship have equal rights."

AB 102 is expected to be heard in Assembly committees this March.

Equality California is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, grassroots-based, statewide advocacy organization whose mission is to achieve equality and civil rights of all lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Californians. Please visit our website at www.eqca.org.

A Christian minister who fled persecution in Indonesia only to wind up in a federal holding cell for more than two years was ordered released along with two others after the ACLU/SC sued on their behalf.

Rev. Raymond Soeoth was jailed in 2004 after he appealed his asylum claim. A judge called the government's claim that he posed a flight risk "disingenuous."

"This is a victory for our clients who have been cut off from their families and livelihoods for years," said ACLU/SC staff attorney Ahilan Arulanantham. "It also sends a strong message to the government that it should provide hearings to the many other immigrants in indefinite detention who deserve to be released."

The three men had been held between two and four and a half years without a hearing. In the past two years, the ACLU has won the release of more than a dozen immigrants held indefinitely.

The ACLU/SC, ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project and Stanford Law School Immigrants' Rights Clinic were co-counsel on the men's cases.

Immigrants already face many hurdles to U.S. citizenship. But excessive delays at the finish line are turning the naturalization marathon into a slog for hundreds of permanent residents.

U.S. law gives immigration officials 120 days to grant or deny citizenship to residents who have met all the legal requirements for citizenship, including passing their naturalization exams and interviews.

A new ACLU lawsuit asks the government to start enforcing its own rules and give prospective citizens a timely yes-or-no answer.

"The government should stick to its timetable and stop putting up roadblocks that keep people from fulfilling their dreams of citizenship," said ACLU/SC staff attorney Ranjana Natarajan, who filed a similar case last year with immigrant rights groups.

In that case, instead of fixing the problem the Department of Homeland Security opted to naturalize our nine plaintiffs in order to dismiss the case.

The new case asks the government to address the underlying cause of these unnaturally long naturalization delays: open-ended FBI "name checks" that drag on for months and years without deadlines for their completion.