The Supreme Court announced Friday afternoon that it will take up the issue of same-sex marriage this year, meaning we are likely to have a nationwide ruling on the matter midway through 2015.
From Chris Geidner:
The Supreme Court announced on Friday that it will take up four cases challenging state bans on same-sex couples’ marriages — a long anticipated move that could lead to nationwide marriage equality.
The cases ask the justices whether Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee bans on same-sex couples’ marriages and bans on recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages from out of state violate the Constitution’s due process and equal protection guarantees.
Currently, same-sex marriage is legal in 36 states plus the District of Columbia. A ruling in favor of the right of same-sex couples to marry throughout the country would bring marriage equality to 14 more states.
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LGBT advocates had been keeping a watchful eye on the court for months. The justices declined to take up the issue last October when nearly all courts across the country appeared to have uniformly received the same message from the Supreme Court's 2013 Windsor decision, which struck down the core of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
Here's the New York Times:
In a remarkable and largely unbroken line of more than 40 decisions, state and federal courts relied on the Windsor decision to rule in favor of same-sex marriage.
The most important exception was a decision in November from a divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, in Cincinnati. Writing for the majority, Judge Jeffrey S. Sutton said that voters and legislators, not judges, should decide the issue.
With that Sixth Circuit ruling, a split emerged among the appeals courts, which often triggers a Supreme Court review of the matter at hand.
The Supreme Court ducked deciding the issue in 2013 when it heard the marriage equality case Hollingsworth v. Perry, instead ruling that the proponents of Proposition did not have standing to defend the measure. That restored same-sex marriage rights only to California, which joined nine other states that already granted gay couples the freedom to marry.
But 27 more states have since legalized same-sex marriage from the last time the question was before the court. When the Supreme Court decided Loving v. Virginia in 1967, it overturned inter-racial marriage bans in 16 states. A decision in favor of marriage equality this summer would similarly overturn marriage bans in 14 states.
Public opinion, however, is far more favorable toward marriage equality today, with more than half the nation supporting the right of lesbians and gays to marry. In 1968, Gallup found that only 20 percent of Americans approved of inter-racial marriages.