Same-Sex Marriage Issue Reaches the Court Early : SCOTUSblog
A little over a year after the Supreme Court set off a wave of lower court decisions striking down state bans on same-sex marriage, the legal contest over the constitutionality of those laws returned to the Supreme Court at midday Tuesday. Utah state officials, filing six weeks ahead of their deadline, asked the Court to uphold their state’s ban. This was the first of several cases on that question likely to reach the Justices in the coming weeks and months.
The Court is in summer recess now, and probably would not act on the Utah case until the Justices return to the Court building this fall, for a new Term that opens on October 6. The same-sex couples who successfully challenged the Utah ban will have a chance to respond to the state’s appeal before the Justices act. But it now appears nearly certain that the Court will take on the issue, and reach a decision by next summer.
The Utah case, titled Herbert v. Kitchen (docket 14-124) raised a single constitutional question: “Whether the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits a state from defining or recognizing marriage only as the legal union between a man and a woman.”
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