Louisiana breaks the streak

One in every crowd, I guess.

RedEquality

A federal judge [in New Orleans] upheld the state’s ban on same-sex marriage on Wednesday, going against what had been a unanimous trend of federal court decisions striking down such bans since the Supreme Court ruled on the matter last year.

In his ruling, Judge Martin L. C. Feldman of Federal District Court said that the regulation of marriage was left up to the states and the democratic process; that no fundamental right was being violated by the ban; and that Louisiana had a “legitimate interest … whether obsolete in the opinion of some, or not, in the opinion of others … in linking children to an intact family formed by their two biological parents.”

That this ruling ran counter to a wave of other federal decisions across the country in recent months was immediately noted by opponents of the ban.

“We always anticipated that it would be a difficult challenge,” said J. Dalton Courson, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, adding that the ruling would be appealed to the Fifth Circuit. “We certainly are disappointed considering the string of rulings in favor of same-sex marriage.”

Since the Supreme Court struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act last year in the case of United States v. Windsor, there have been 21 consecutive federal court decisions finding that gay marriage bans were unconstitutional, according to the Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights group.

This tally includes cases that have made it to the appellate level: the 10th Circuit, in Denver, affirmed such rulings in Utah and Oklahoma, and the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., upheld the overturning of Virginia’s ban as well. Other cases are still waiting at the appellate level; a decision striking down Texas’s gay marriage ban has already been appealed to the Fifth Circuit.

With so much activity in the federal courts, legal experts believe that the Supreme Court is likely to rule more definitively on gay marriage during the next term, potentially rendering Wednesday’s decision moot within the next year.

TPM has a copy of the ruling. Judge Feldman apparently bought into the lurid slippery-slope arguments that hapless true-believer AGs have been unsuccessfully peddling elsewhere. The Fifth Circuit already has Texas’ appeal to deal with, once it gets around to putting it on their calendar. And in the time it took me to write this, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the ban on same sex marriages in Wisconsin and Indiana, thus starting a new win streak for the forces of equality. One way or another, this question will be decided by SCOTUS. One hope this time they don’t duck the big issue, and that they get it right again.

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One Response to Louisiana breaks the streak

  1. Bill Daniels says:

    ” …no fundamental right was being violated by the ban…”

    I guess equal treatment under the law is no longer a fundamental right. When you allow certain folks to do something that will result in collecting Social Security benefits, but refuse to allow other folks to do the same thing, that’s not equal treatment under the law.

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