The Kentuckians challenging the state's constitutional ban on same-sex marriage are formally asking the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday to consider the case.
The filing, a draft of which is posted below, comes less thantwo weeks after the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati upheld same-sex marriage bans in Kentucky, Ohio, Michigan and Tennessee.
In the past year or so, federal courts have routinely sided with plaintiffs in same-sex marriage ban challenges. That's what happened in Kentucky earlier this year when U.S. District Judge John Heyburnstruck down the 2004 state constitutional amendment. The ban, he wrote, violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
When the Supreme Court this fall passed on the opportunity to consider same-sex marriage laws, legal observers said thejustices appeared to be waiting for the opportunity to weigh in on some disagreement among the lower courts.
In their filing, the Louisville-based attorneys for the Kentucky plaintiffs pointed out that that's now the situation before the Supreme Court.
"This Court should grant certiorari because the decision below presents a marked departure from the reasoning of other circuits on a question of exceptional importance," the filing notes.
Joe Dunman, one of the attorneys for the Kentucky plaintiffs, notes on his blog that they're also arguing that the 6th Circuit's ruling was incorrect and that the case is of national importance.
Plaintiffs in the three other states affected by the 6th Circuit's opinion have also asked the Supreme Court to consider their cases, Dunman wrote. The Supreme Court could hear them all together in its current term, chose one of the cases or wait until next year, he added.
We'll hear more from the attorneys later today.
