After more than a decade of legal wrangling and a burst of judicial activism that overturned the will of the voters in dozens of states, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to rule on whether same-sex “marriage” is an unalienable constitutional right. Justices announced Friday that they had consolidated four cases from the states of Ohio, Tennessee, Michigan, and Kentucky, scheduling two hearings for April.
According to the Court's document, the first 90-minute session will ask, “Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?” The second session, scheduled to last one hour, will ask, “Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?”
The move comes after the High Court declined to hear a series of appeals in October, leaving states where judges had redefined marriage without legal recourse. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg hinted at a public hearing that justices could weigh in on the issue if lower court rulings began to conflict.
In November, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Ohio, upheld the constitutionality of constitutional marriage protection amendments in four states – the four states where the justices agreed to hear appeals on Friday.
Court watchers expect a ruling before the end of the court's term in late June.
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Poster Comment:
The X Amendment vs. the XIV Amendment.
