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California’s highest court on Tuesday upheld the state’s gay-marriage ban but allowed existing same-sex marriages to stand.

The California Supreme Court handed down its decision in a series of lawsuits seeking to overturn November’s Proposition 8. Gay-rights advocates maintain the ballot measure so dramatically revised the state constitution’s equal protection clause that it needed the Legislature’s approval before it could be put to voters.

The seven-member court upheld the initiative as a constitutional expression of the electorate’s will, but also decided to sustain the marriages of an estimated 18,000 gay couples who wed before the measure passed with 52 percent of the vote.