Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
Vallejos and Daniel Domingo appealed their cases to the Court of Final Appeal, and were respectively assigned the case numbers FACV 19 and 20/2012. They would be represented before the CFA by Michael Fordham; David Pannick continued to represent the Government. Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma rejected a further application for joinder by eight-year-old Liang Wing-ki, the Hong Kong-born daughter of mainland parents, whose next friend, mother Li Yinxian, filed suit on her behalf. Philip Dykes, for the applicant, argued that because Vallejos and Domingo's case would touch on issues of interpretation of the Basic Law under Article 158, Liang's interests would also be affected. In rejecting Liang's application, Ma stated: "We feel that the points you seem to argue are adequately covered and will be adequately covered". Liang and other Hong Kong-born children like her were ruled to be entitled to the right of abode in Hong Kong in the 2001 case "Director of Immigration v. Chong Fung Yuen".
Defense of Marriage Act
While the case was on appeal to the Ninth Circuit, on July 3, 2012, the DOJ asked the Supreme Court to review the case before the Ninth Circuit decides it so it can be heard together with two other cases in which DOMA Section 3 was held unconstitutional, "Gill v. Office of Personnel Management" and "Massachusetts v. United States Department of Health and Human Services". The Supreme Court chose to hear "Windsor" instead of these cases, and following the Supreme Court decision in "Windsor" the Ninth Circuit dismissed the appeal in "Golinski" with the consent of all parties on July 23.