The U.S. Supreme Court has moved the date it will decide whether or not to accept for up to six same-sex marriage cases, related to Prop 8 and DOMA, to November 30, ten days from the originally scheduled date. The Court has the right to accept or reject cases, with or without comment.
No reason has been given.
“AFER, who is responsible for bringing the Prop 8 trial to federal court, is reporting that the conference has indeed been rescheduled to November 30,” Scottie Thomaston at Prop 8 Trial Tracker reports:
The Prop 8 case, as well as all the challenges to Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act will be taken up at the conference, when the Court will decide whether and which cases to review.
Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed adds:
Although the brief delay won’t make any major distinction in the way any accepted cases are handled at the Supreme Court in the coming months, the delay is significant for couples in California. If the Supreme Court decides not to hear an appeal of the challenge to Proposition 8 brought by the American Foundation for Equal Rights, then the Ninth Circuit ruling striking down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional will stand. In that situation, the appeals court would then issue a mandate to the district court, allowing it to put into effect its order stopping the enforcement of Proposition 8 — and, hence, returning to same-sex couples in the state the right to marry.
And AFER notes:
The updated timeline suggests that we will likely find out if our case will be heard by the nation’s highest court, or if marriages can resume in California, by Monday, December 3. However, there is no deadline by which the Court must act, and the Justices could hold the case for consideration at a future Conference.
With marriage equality laws on the books in nine states and the District of Columbia, and with at least 16 national polls confirming that a majority of Americans believe gay and lesbian couples should be able to marry, the momentum toward marriage equality has never been greater.