The ACLU of Missouri has filed a lawsuit to challenge Missouri's ban on same-sex marriage, Missouri Digital News reports, and Missouri's governor says he supports the right of gays to marry as long as voters approve it. The plaintiffs argue the ban violates their due process and equal protection rights.
There have been more positive developments this week in favor of same-sex marriage and LGBT rights:
One, Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage was struck down, Christian Science Monitor reports. The ruling is the first in the south to overturn a voter-backed prohibition on same-sex matrimony as unconstitutional.
Two, the Associated Press reports that a federal judge ruled this week that Kentucky must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. The judge struck down the clause on recognizing out-of-state same-sex matrimony as imposing a traditional or faith-based limitation without a sufficient justification for it, the AP also reports.
Three, the Southern Poverty Law Center has filed a lawsuit challenging Alabama's same-sex marriage ban, the Washington Blade reports. The issue involves a same-sex couple in which one spouse was killed in a car accident and his widower is barred from receiving the majority of any settlement money in a wrongful death action. Opposite-sex spouses get that privilege in Alabama.
An Indiana Senate committee voted this week to send a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage to the full legislative body, the Associated Press reports. House legislators stripped out a sentence that would ban civil unions, but the amendment's supporters want the sentence restored. If the sentence is restored, a public vote could happen this fall. If the sentence is not restored, then legislators would have to pass the amendment a second time in another legislative session before the measure could go to voters.
The cause of same-sex marriage and LGBT rights advanced in several states around the country this week:
* The Idaho Supreme Court will now allow the adoption of a same-sex partner's children, The Washington Post's Eugene Volokh writes: "More broadly, the court concludes that such a second-parent adoption doesn’t require that the parties be married to each other, so that adoption of an opposite-sex partner’s (or even friend’s) children would be allowed as well, so long as the other requirements for adoption are met."
* Nevada has withdrawn its appeal to uphold that state's same-sex marriage ban, Bloomberg reports: "Nevada was defending a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages established by a voter-approved amendment. A federal judge in 2012 ruled that the state law didn’t violate the equal protection rights of eight same-sex couples that sued to overturn it. Yesterday, the state dropped its defense of the ban in the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco" due to the 9th Circuit's ruling that heightened constitutional scrutiny would not allow a gay man to be excluded from a trial involving an AIDS drug.
* Same-sex couples have filed a lawsuit to challenge Texas' same-sex marriage ban, Reuters reports.
* Same-sex couples have filed a lawsuit to challenge Ohio's ban on allowing both same-sex partners on children's birth certificates, the Associated Press reports. A similar Ohio lawsuit over death certificates had success, and the attorney prosecuting the cases says his tactics "will give the U.S. Supreme Court a wider variety of legal arguments to consider when appeals from various states reach their chambers."
Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore mailed letters this week to all 50 governors asking them to urge their legislatures to call for a national convention on amending the U.S. Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, the Associated Press reports. The chief justice also is "known on the national stage for fighting to display the Ten Commandments in a judicial building," the AP reports. Moore told the AP it's the only way to "stop judges who are finding new rights to gay unions." Moore also said he was upholding Alabama's ban on same-sex marriage.
An Article V convention has never been held.
Utah has filed its brief in the 10th Circuit defending the state's ban on same-sex marriage after a district judge struck it down as unconstitutional, Deseret News reports. One argument by the state is that there is nothing in the federal Constitution preventing Utah's citizens from limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. A second argument by the state is "'redefining marriage as a genderless, adult-centric institution would fundamentally change Utah's child-centered meaning and purpose of marriage,'" the paper further reports. A third argument by the state is "that traditional marriage furthers the state's interests in accommodating religious freedom and preserving social harmony in the state, while redefining marriage would be a recipe for social and religious strife," the paper also reports.
Two courts rulings regarding same-sex marriage have been issued. A state judge ruled that the law authorizing same-sex marriage in Hawaii is constitutional, BigIslandNow.com reports. A federal judge has authorized a challenge to West Virginia's ban on same-sex marriage to go forward, The Herald-Dispatch of Huntington, WV, reports. The federal judge did strike down a claim involving out-of-state-marriages because "unmarried couples, with no stated desire to marry in another state, lack standing to challenge West Virginia's non-recognition of out-of-state marriages."
The Indiana House approved putting a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage before voters, The Guardian reports. Now the measure has to be considered in the Senate. However, the proposed amendment was modified to remove language that would have banned civil unions and same-sex couples receiving benefits from their employers. Senators are expected to try to restore the language, The Guardian further reports.
At least three Republican legislators in Indiana have proposed a change to a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage that is pending in the House, Gannett's Palladium-Item reports. The change would strike a sentence that would ban civil unions for same-sex couples. The change would mean the measure would have to be approved a second time by the General Assembly before going to voters.
An excerpt of the piece I wrote for the Connecticut Law Tribune about a possible case of wrongful conviction in a double homicide and the law clinic who won a new trial for their client:
When eight law school students had their first day ever in court, the stakes could not have been higher: They were representing a man who contends he was wrongly convicted of a double New Haven homicide.
The payoff was not only a learning experience, but a December ruling by a federal judge that their client's constitutional rights were violated when evidence that the key prosecution witness had been coached by a detective was kept from the defense counsel.
Brett Dignam was overseeing the students. These days, she's clinical professor of law at Columbia Law School. But she started working on the case of Scott L. Lewis when she was a professor at Yale Law School who led the institution's prison legal services, complex federal litigation and Supreme Court advocacy clinics.
Along with Dignam, Elora Mukherjee, who co-teaches Columbia's mass incarceration clinic with Dignam, and a rotating cast of law students have represented Lewis in his fight to win a new trial.
Last month, Connecticut U.S. Senior District Judge Charles Haight Jr. granted Lewis' habeas corpus petition.
The case is not over yet because the Connecticut's Commissioner of Correction filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on Jan. 15. Jo Anne Sulik, senior assistant state's attorney with the Office of the Chief State's Attorney, did not respond to a request for comment.
Lewis, who is serving a 120-year prison sentence, represented himself for 14 years in an area of extremely complicated federal law, Dignam said. As far as she knows, he was the first person to seek DNA testing when Connecticut passed a law authorizing convicted defendants to make such motions.
Lewis went from handling his case all by himself to dealing with the challenges of being represented by a law clinic full of budding lawyers who change with the academic season, she said. There is no continuity because there are eight new students each semester working on the case, Dignam said.
"To be part of the legal education of generations of law students says something" about Lewis, Dignam said.
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