A Federal Court Just Upheld Gay Marriage Bans in 4 States. Will the Supreme Court Step In?
We now have an appeals court split, will the Supreme court take this up again as a result?
The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals on November 6 upheld same-sex marriage bans in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee, making it the first federal appeals court in the country to come down against marriage equality.
Beyond stopping same-sex couples from marrying in several states, the decision makes it very likely that the Supreme Court will now step in to decide the issue of same-sex marriage. The nation’s highest court previously side-stepped the debate, largely because all circuit courts had been in agreement that states’ same-sex marriage bans violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses. The decision not to act sparked a wave of court rulings ending same-sex marriage bans in several states, from Idaho to North Carolina.
“[W]hen there’s no disagreement among the courts of appeals, we don’t step in,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said at the 92nd Street Y event on October 19. “The major job that the court has is to keep the law of the United States more or less uniform. So when courts of appeals disagree about what the law of the United States is, then we are obligated to grant review. If there had been a court of appeals on the other side, we probably would have taken that case.”
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