During the recent campaign season, Democrats expected the Supreme Court to play a role in deciding the presidential race: they urged gays to vote for Vice President Al Gore in part because he would be the more likely candidate to appoint justices who would support civil rights.

But no one could have predicted just how key the Court’s role would be. And the fallout from its direct involvement in the presidential race’s outcome has the attention of the gay community.

The openly divisive nature of the Dec. 12 decision that ended Gore’s chance at the next presidency is not a good sign for gays, said Eric Ferrero of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Lesbian and Gay Rights Project. “It probably lessens the Court’s willingness or ability to come to compromise on a number of issues as they have done in the past,” he said.

The justices, he said, have been known for respectfully agreeing to disagree amongst themselves and for coming to a consensus on important issues. “Those are both things that have sometimes benefited our community,” said Ferrero. “At least for the immediate future, that may be hard for us to do.”

Mary Bonauto, an attorney with Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders and co-counsel in Vermont’s Baker same-sex marriage case, said the five/four division in the Bush vs. Gore decision was not a surprise to her. “We’ve seen that same split frequently in the past,” she said.

The division is not new, Ferrero agreed. “What is new is their being more public about it and strident about it,” he said. “That gets at their ability from here on to compromise.”

Equally, if not more, important to the progress of gay rights, said Bonauto, will be the appointments Bush, as president, can make to lower federal courts. The District and Appeals courts see many more cases of direct importance to gays and lesbians, she said.

The U.S. Senate’s lack of action on many appointments by President Clinton, Bonauto said, has left the federal court system severely understaffed. “Bush is inheriting a crisis in the federal judiciary created by the Senate Republicans,” she said, and how that situation gets handled could have an enormous effect on the community.

Although no current Supreme Court justice has announced plans to retire soon, some analysts have mentioned the possibility of stalemates between the Senate and the Executive branch leading to Supreme Court seats left vacant indefinitely, just as has occurred on lower courts. The frontline in the battle for the judiciary, said Bonauto, will be the Senate.