Governor Rick Snyder (image, right) has decided to not allow agencies of the state of Michigan — at least for now — to recognize the legal marriages of hundreds of same-sex couples who married over the weekend.
The Michigan Republican governor is blocking state agencies, such as the motor vehicle department, to recognize these marriages. Some issues at stake are medical benefits, health care, and insurance, adoption and taxes, to name a few.
Michigan’s attorney general Bill Schuette successfully petitioned the Sixth Circuit to block more couples from marrying, after a federal judge ruled that state’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. About 300 couples married on Saturday.
The Associated Press reports that Gov. Snyder’s spokesperson Sarah Wurfel told the AP the “governor and administration are not weighing in on these issues at this point.”
Asked if that would prevent, for example, a newlywed gay couple from applying for adoption of children on Monday, Wurfel said that Snyder’s office considers everything to be on hold for now.
“The order is stayed (at least until Wednesday),” Wurfel wrote in the email, and so the “issue is moot at this point until resolved.”
But the Court stopped further marriages from taking place. It did not state those couples who had married were not legally married. Yet the governor is waiting for this case to be resolved — either when an appeals court weighs in on Wednesday, or possibly until it gets all the way to the Supreme Court — until he allows these couples recognition.
A separate AP article notes:
“We are not saying that we aren’t or won’t recognize the marriages that happened on Saturday, but that we’re awaiting further court or legal direction on this complex, unusual situation,” Wurfel told The Associated Press in an email Sunday.
“Either way, this can’t be construed one way or another as not recognizing the validity of the same sex marriages.”
In Utah, a federal judge ruled at the end of December that state’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional also. Nine days later the state successfully petitioned a federal court to stay that ruling, leaving about 1000 legally-married same-sex couples in similar limbo, as the governor there is prohibition the state from recognizing those marriages. The federal government is recognizing the Utah marriages of same-sex couples.
Even in California, after Prop 8 passed, 18,000 couples remained legally married. Regardless of any future court ruling, chances are very strong those 300 Michigan couples will still be married under the law, so why wait?
This article has been updated for clarity.
Image: Michigan Governor Rick Snyder with his wife, First Lady Sue Snyder. Photo by Robhallphoto via Wikipedia.