Supremes Take No Action Today on Gay Marriage
- Associated Press
The Supreme Court took no action on any of the 10 gay-marriage petitions before it Friday, despite expectations that the justices would finally announce their plans regarding challenges to three separate laws denying recognition to same-sex couples.
The court could add any of those cases to its docket as soon as Monday, but more likely the justices will continue discussing the matter at their next private conference, scheduled for Dec. 7.
Most attention has focused on challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a 1996 statute denying federal benefits to lawfully married same-sex spouses. Federal appeals courts in Boston and New York have found the measure unconstitutional, finding that the government had insufficient justification to penalize gays and lesbians.
Separately, the Supreme Court has been weighing whether to review California’s Proposition 8, a 2008 voter initiative limiting marriage to a man and a woman. A federal appeals court in San Francisco found the measure unconstitutionally withdrew marriage rights from gays after the California Supreme Court ruled in May 2008 that those rights were protected by the state constitution.
Additionally, the court has before it an Arizona measure known as Section O that withdrew state employee benefits from domestic partners. Heterosexual couples could maintain such benefits by getting married, an option unavailable to gay couples who may not wed in Arizona.
A federal appeals court in Phoenix found Section O violated the Constitution’s equal-protection guarantee.
The Supreme Court justices held their regular private conference on Friday, and they were scheduled to discuss whether to take up the gay-marriage cases. The court said Friday afternoon that it would accept two cases unrelated to gay marriage that were also on the conference calendar, but that announcement didn’t say anything about the gay-marriage cases.
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