BREAKING: U.S. Supreme Court Refuses to Rule on Gay Marriage

[mahatmakanejeeves]

22. Adding a link, or some links,

Last edited Mon Oct 6, 2014, 02:01 PM - Edit history (1)

so you can see the comments.

Supreme Court declines to review same-sex marriage cases

Legal argument over gay marriage is all but over

Plum Line
By Paul Waldman October 6 at 11:49 AM 

When the Supreme Court declines to hear a case — known as “denying cert” — it can seem anticlimactic. Instead of dramatic oral arguments and protests outside the Court, we get a written notification that the decision of an appeals court will stand.

But sometimes, denying cert is an earthquake. And that’s what happened today. The Court denied cert in same-sex marriage cases from Indiana, Wisconsin, Utah, Virginia, and Oklahoma. In all five cases, appeals courts had declared state laws banning same-sex marriage to be unconstitutional. The decisions of those appeals courts now stand, which means that same-sex marriage is permitted not only in the 19 liberal states (plus D.C.) where it was already legal, but in some of the most conservative states in the country.

And that’s not all. It isn’t just these five states, it’s also every state covered by the circuit courts that rendered these decisions. Utah and Oklahoma are in the 10th Circuit, Wisconsin and Indiana are in the 7th Circuit, and Virginia is in the 4th Circuit. Taken together, these circuits cover 14 states, three of which (Illinois, New Mexico, and Maryland) already have marriage equality on the books. So marriage equality will shortly be the law in these additional states: Utah, Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas, Oklahoma, Wisconsin, Indiana, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina.

That makes a total of 30 states plus D.C. in which same-sex couples will be allowed to marry. So what happens now?