Less than two weeks after roughing up attorneys for the states of Wisconsin and Indiana in a heated oral argument, a three-judge panel of the Chicago-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit issued a unanimous decision in Baskin v. Bogan, 2014 WL 4359059 (September 4, 2014), striking down the bans on same-sex marriage in those states. Writing for the panel, Circuit Judge Richard Posner, one of Ronald Reagan’s earliest judicial appointees in 1981, … <Read More>
Wisconsin marriage amendment
Wisconsin Supreme Court Rejects Constitutional Challenge to Domestic Partnership Law
The seven-member Wisconsin Supreme Court has rejected a state constitutional challenge to the Wisconsin Domestic Partnership Act. The July 31 ruling in Appling v. Walker, 2014 WI 96, 2014 Wisc. LEXIS 533, in an opinion by Justice N. Patrick Crooks, Jr., held that the state’s marriage amendment, passed in 2006, did not prevent the legislature from creating a legal status for same-sex couples that would carry many, but not all, of the rights of marriage. … <Read More>