The Indiana House has advanced a proposed state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, the Associated Press reports. So far the full House only took a technical vote to accept the action of the House Elections Committee in favor of the measure. A floor debate is expected next week.
The Indiana House Elections Committee voted in favor of a proposed constitutional amendment to bar same-sex marriage last night, the Indianpolis Star reports. Nine Republicans were in favor and three Democrats were against the measure. If passed, the measure would go onto the November ballot for voters to consider. The measure has already been passed by legislators once before, but it has to be passed again before voters get the chance to decide whether to amend the state constitution to incorporate the ban.
The bill was changed from the Judiciary Committee to the Elections Committee because there were not enough votes to pass it out of the Judiciary Committee, The Star further reports.
Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring is slated to announce later today that the state government will join the two same-sex couples asking a federal court to strike down the state's ban on same-sex matrimony as unconstitutional, The Washington Post reports. The action "is a result of November elections in which Democrats swept the state's top offices," The Post reports. Herring will note that Virginia has been on the wrong side of landmark legal issues like school desegregation and interracial marriage, and this is an opportunity to be on the right side what would be a civil-rights milestone, The Post further reports.
Six same-sex couples in Florida have sued over that state's ban on same-sex marriage, Miami New Times reports. While the ban is only five years old, polling shows "that nearly 75 percent of Floridians approve of some sort of recognition of gay couples," the blog further reports.
Another state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage has been struck down. A federal judge ruled today that Oklahoma's ban on same-sex marriage violates the guarantee of equal protection in the U.S. Constitution, USA Today reports. The ban, the judge reasoned is "'an arbitrary, irrational exclusion of just one class of Oklahoma citizens from a governmental benefit,"' USA Today further reports. The ruling, unlike a similar one in Utah, was stayed for the inevitable appeal.
The Indiana House Judiciary Committee heard testimony today about legislation that would start the process to amend Indiana's constitution to ban same-sex marriage. But the vote was delayed by the committee chair, the Associated Press reports.
Law professor Noah Feldman argues in a piece for Bloomberg that the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to strike down the federal Defense Against Marriage Act without declaring same-sex marriage a fundamental constitutional right has left the issue "a total friggin' mess." The result is the limbo in Utah in which a federal judge has declared that state's ban unconstitutional and same-sex nuptials have been proceeding until the Supreme Court stayed the ruling yesterday. Feldman said that the Windsor majority made a mistake by not going to the full marital goalpost. "Striving for gradualism, it gave us confusion," Feldman says. "Right now in Utah, some people are in a marriage limbo. They have married since the district court ruling, and now their unions are recognized by the federal government, too (one presumes) under Windsor. If the state ban is reinstated, what then? They will be unmarried (maybe) under Utah law. Will they be federally unmarried, too? It's not an abstract question, since they might not be able to get married in other states that recognize gay marriage since they aren't residents of those states. In short, we may be facing citizens who are married in no state but are married federally."
Four couples are challenging Arizona's ban on same-sex marriage in a putatative class action, Courthouse News Service reports. For example, "plaintiffs Holly Mitchell and Suzanne Cummins say that though they were able to become certified foster care parents, only Cummins was allowed to adopt their two children because 'Arizona law strongly prefers heterosexual couples in permanent adoption proceedings and permits only a husband and wife to jointly adopt,'" Courthouse News Service further reports. The plaintiffs are seeking declaratory judgment and injunctive relief.
The U.S. Supreme Court halted same-sex marriages in Utah this morning while an appeal of a ruling that the state's ban on same-sex nuptials violates constitutional rights proceeds in the Tenth Circuit, NPR reports. A stay during an appeal was denied by lower courts. The justices' order was without comment or dissent.
Despite the many lawsuits pending to strike at state-level bans on same-sex marriage--and success in some of those lawsuits, the Associated Press reports that the 30-plus mini-Defense of Marriage Act laws aren't going anywhere just quite yet. "'The thing that I would not do is confidently predict that now all of these ‘mini’ DOMAs are going to be declared unconstitutional. That would be a mistake,' ... Andrew M. Koppelman, a Northwestern University School of Law professor and author of “Same Sex, Different States: When Same-Sex Marriages Cross State Lines,”' told the AP. '“There is wiggle room here for judges to do what comports with their sense of what’s right.'" For example, some judges could find that the U.S. Supreme Court decision striking down the federal DOMA left the decision on authorizing same-sex marriage up to individual states.
Lawyer and Legal Journalist
