This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court issued the following order:
MONDAY, JANUARY 6, 2014
ORDER IN PENDING CASE
13A687 HERBERT, GOV. OF UT, ET AL. V. KITCHEN, DEREK, ET AL.
The application for stay presented to Justice Sotomayor and
by her referred to the Court is granted. The permanent
injunction issued by the United States District Court for the
District of Utah, case No. 2:13-cv-217, on December 20, 2013, is
stayed pending final disposition of … <Read More>
There’s a subtext to New York County Surrogate Court Judge Rita Mella’s adoption decision, Matter of the Adoption of a Child Whose First Name is G, which is published January 6, 2014, in the New York Law Journal. The man petitioning to be adoptive parent of G, a little girl born in Ethiopia who was adopted in 2011 by the man’s close friend, is gay, and the child’s adoptive mother is not gay. Therein lies … <Read More>
Today the attorneys for the plaintiffs in Kitchen v. Herbert, the Utah marriage equality case, filed their opposition with the Supreme Court to the state’s application for a stay of the trial court ruling.
Under the trial court ruling, issued on Dec. 20, same-sex marriages began happening in Utah that date. On December 23, the trial judge, Robert Shelby, denied the state’s motion to stay his ruling pending appeal. Two days later, a panel of … <Read More>
Is a Mohawk-style haircut so “extreme” that an airline would be justified in not allowing a male flight attendant to work a flight when he reported for duty thus groomed?
In Falcon v. Continental Airlines, 2013 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 171349 (D. N.J., Dec. 4, 2013), U.S. District Judge Jose L. Linares ruled that if gay flight attendant Ray Falcon can prove that Continental’s supervisors on duty at Newark Airport on September 23, 2010, knew … <Read More>
Late this afternoon the state of Utah petitioned the Supreme Court to stay the ruling by U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby in the marriage equality case, Kitchen v. Herbert. The Petition is addressed to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is assigned to hear such petitions emanating from the states in the 10th Circuit. Last week, a pair of 10th Circuit judges, sitting as a panel to hear such petitions, supported Judge Shelby’s decision to deny a … <Read More>
Poetic justice happened yesterday in Utah. In 2008, the Mormon Church played a huge role in temporarily overturning the California Supreme Court’s In re Marriage ruling by passing Proposition 8, which was itself only overturned effectively this past June 26 when the U.S. Supreme Court found that the proponents of the measure lacked standing to appeal a federal district court’s decision that it was unconstitutional. That ruling, but more importantly, the ruling in a case … <Read More>
December 23, 2013, was an incredibly busy day on the same-sex marriage legal front.:
In Utah, U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby denied a motion by the state to stay his ruling of a few days before holding that same-sex couples have a federal constitutional right to marry, and the state filed an “emergency” appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit (their third such motion) seeking a stay pending appeal. … <Read More>
The Court of Appeals of Indiana ruled on December 20 that an existing different-sex marriage is not rendered void when one of the spouses has obtained a legal judgment of gender change. Reversing a ruling by Judge Valeri Haughton of the Monroe Circuit Court, Judge Paul Mathias wrote for the court in Davis v. Summers that this construction of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage would be “beyond the purview of our constitutional authority to … <Read More>
Utah may be the 18th marriage equality state, although it is becoming difficult to figure out how to number them. Today (December 20), U.S. District Judge Robert J. Shelby granted an injunction to the plaintiffs in Kitchen v. Herbert, 2013 Westlaw 6697874, a federal constitutional challenge to Utah’s statutory and state constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Shelby, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, ruled that the right of same-sex couples to marry is … <Read More>
The New Mexico Supreme Court ruled today in a unanimous decision in Greigo v. Oliver, Docket No. 34, 306, 2013 WL 6670704, that the state’s marriage law denies same-sex couples the right to marry and thus violates the Equal Protection Clause of the state’s constitution. Wrote Justice Edward L. Chavez for the court: “We hold that the State of New Mexico is constitutionally required to allow same-gender couples to marry and must extend to them … <Read More>