[JURIST] The US District Court for the District of Oregon [official website] ruled Friday that Oregon's domestic partnership law [HB 2007 text] should be allowed to take effect, saying that opponents of the law failed to gather the necessary signatures to place the law on the ballot for public referendum next November. Judge Michael Mosman suspended the law [JURIST report] in December pending Friday's hearing to determine whether county clerks inappropriately rejected signatures. In lieu of a written opinion, Mosmon issued a transcript [PDF text] of his closing remarks, saying that the "most troubling" argument in the case was its analogy to Bush v. Gore, and:

that if the actual setup for counting votes, and perhaps by extension for counting signatures, is so without standards that people who vote or sign a petition in one county are far more likely to qualify than people in another county because the evaluators, the people working for the state don't have any standard by which to make their judgments, that can violate the equal protection clause.