If you think that Alabama is the only state with rogue state judges that refuse to follow federal court rulings/orders, you would be wrong. And, some of these judges are not even in the Southeast. This Tuscon family-law judge is one example of a judge that is still following a state marriage ban that
has been ruled unconstitutional - by a federal district judge. No stay was issued. The judge is Tuscon's Judge Sean Brearcliffe. He has refused to grant a divorce to a married lesbian couple because he says that the state of Arizona does not recognize their marriage (anyway). The couple had been living together in Arizona for about three years and decided to go to Vermont to get married in 2010. They returned to Arizona and lived there together for another two years. Marriage equality has been the law of the land in Arizona since October 17, 2014. One of the ladies now lives in Maine. The couple have no kids, no shared property and no claims of alimony.
From tucson.com:
On Feb. 17, Brearcliffe ruled that Tucsonan Martha A. Morris, 67, and her estranged wife, Vicki M. Sullivan, 64, now of Maine, could not be divorced.
Brearcliffe’s fundamental reason for denying the divorce: Neither a federal trial court nor the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sets precedents he must follow.
”The general rule,” Brearcliffe wrote, “is that the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution (U.S. Const. art. VI, cl. 2) does not require state courts to follow precedent from either federal trial courts or Circuit Courts of Appeal interpreting the United States Constitution.”
He not only denied the petition for divorce, but he said it would be dismissed “with prejudice” — meaning without opportunity for re-filing or reconsideration — unless Morris either agreed instead to do an annulment or request a stay. She got a Southern Arizona Legal Aid attorney, Anthony Wisz, to represent her and is planning to appeal Brearcliffe's decision.
Another attorney who’s been active in supporting same-sex marriage in Tucson, Ron Zack, told me he found Brearcliffe’s ruling “bizarre.”
“He’s making it sound as if he has no choice. I don’t think that’s the case at all,” Zack said. “From reading his point of view, we shouldn’t be issuing marriage licenses here” to same sex-couples.
This should have been one of the simplest possible divorce cases for a family-law judge like Brearcliffe, who was appointed by then-Gov. Jan Brewer in 2013.
It's sad that some gay couples' marriages do not work out just as some heterosexual couples' marriages do not work out. Nevertheless, gay folks should have the opportunity to give it a go. Hopefully, the SCOTUS will resolve the issue nationwide with a favorable ruling for marriage equality by the end of June.