The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, whose jurisdiction includes Michigan, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, ruled in favor of state-enacted same-sex marriage bans. The decision actually reverses the decisions from lower courts in the four states, all of which had a pro-marriage equality ruling in place (stayed until review in 6th Circuit Court). This dissent of opinion from all other circuit courts puts same-sex marriage back on the radar for the Supreme Court.
Should the Supreme Court take on the case, the hearing will have far-reaching consequences across the nation. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has previously stated that a rift in same-sex marriage decisions would speed the process for review by the Supreme Court.
In the 6th Circuit Court decisions, two of the federal judges upheld the same-sex marriage bans while the third judge wrote a fiery dissent, blasting her colleagues on their decision. “Instead of recognizing the plaintiffs as persons, suffering actual harm as a result of being denied the right to marry where they reside or the right to have their valid marriages recognized there, my colleagues view the plaintiffs as social activists who have somehow stumbled into federal court, inadvisably, when they should be out campaigning to win ‘the hearts and minds’ of Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee voters to their cause,” wrote Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey.
“But these plaintiffs are not political zealots trying to push reform on their fellow citizens; they are committed same-sex couples, many of them heading up de facto families, who want to achieve equal status … with their married neighbors, friends, and coworkers, to be accepted as contributing members of their social and religious communities, and to be welcomed as fully legitimate parents at their children’s schools,” she wrote. “They seek to do this by virtue of exercising a civil right that most of us take for granted — the right to marry.”
She concluded by writing, “If we in the judiciary do not have the authority, and indeed the responsibility, to right fundamental wrongs left excused by a majority of the electorate, our whole intricate, constitutional system of checks and balances, as well as the oaths to which we swore, prove to be nothing but shams.”
[H/T HuffPo]
