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After initially opposing the filing of a federal challenge to Prop 8 by the Ted Olson and David Boies’ American Foundation for Equal Rights, the ACLU, Lambda Legal and the National Center for Lesbian Rights are now throwing their support behind it.

Yesterday they filed an a brief (PDF) saying:

Proposition 8 did something that no other state constitutional amendment has ever done—namely, it detached the substantive core of the fundamental right to marry under the state constitution and statutes from the status of marriage in order to withdraw equal citizenship from lesbian and gay couples while otherwise leaving their substantive legal rights intact. The novelty of that effort—together with the decidedly “untraditional” severing of the formal and substantive aspects of marriage—defeats any attempt to portray Proposition 8 as rationally advancing a legitimate, non-animus-based goal of restoring a “traditional” definition of marriage.

Law Dork says:

This is very big news. . . . Now, the three legal groups other than GLAD apparently have filed court briefs supporting the Olson/Boies suit . . . GLAD is notably absent, as is Freedom to Marry [which is less notable because the group, despite being headed by a lawyer, is more focused on education than litigation]. Is this a sign of a break in Gay, Inc., on the Olson/Boies suit?