The inventor of JavaScript and Chief Technology Officer of the Mozilla Corporation donated $1000 (£630) in the fight against marriage equality in California, it has emerged.

Brendan Eich gave the sum to the Proposition 8 fund, which topped $39m and, at the time, successfully revoked gay couples’ equal marriage rights by state-wide ballot.

Californian law required donors to list their employers on lists that were published by the LA Times.

Mr Eich was the only person listed as an employee of the Mozilla Corporation, which runs the web browser Firefox, to donate against marriage equality, with three other employees giving a total of $1,350 in favour of equal marriage rights.

As Mr Eich pointed out last night, Mozilla had no control over employees’ donations.

In February, a three-judge panel of the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the ban on gay marriages in California did violate the equal protection clause of the US constitution, overruling Proposition 8.

The court said: “Although the Constitution permits communities to enact most laws they believe to be desirable, it requires that there be at least a legitimate reason for the passage of a law that treats different classes of people differently.”

In February last year, the LA Times called Proposition 8 a “deplorable situation”, saying gay couples “should be allowed to marry while the Proposition 8 case works its way through the system”.