US Supreme Court refuses to hear appeals of same-sex marriage rulings

October 06, 2014

The US Supreme Court has declined to hear appeals of several court decisions overturning laws that banned same-sex marriage.

Without addressing the merits of the arguments, the Supreme Court let stand rulings that redefined marriage in five states: Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, Virginia, and Wisconsin. Six other states (Colorado, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia, and Wyoming) will be bound by appellate court rulings that had the same effect.

The Supreme Court’s surprise decision, announced on October 6, leaves unsettled the key argument in the marriage cases: whether a law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman is inherently unconstitutional. Nevertheless, while the issue could still be tested at the Supreme Court as some future date, same-sex marriages will now be legally recognized in 30 American states. Any attempt to recover the traditional understanding of legal marriage would now face the considerable obstacle of accounting for the thousands of same-sex unions solemnized in those 30 states, and any others that may now adopt the same policy.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who had defended the traditional understanding of marriage, said that the political debate was now effectively resolved. With the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear Wisconsin’s appeal, he said, “it is clear that the position of the court of appeals at the federal level is the law of the land and we're going to go forward enacting it."

 

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Further information:

• High court denies gay marriage appeals (AP)