A Wisconsin same-sex couple has just filed a lawsuit in the state Supreme Court asking for the right to marry. Katherine Halopka-Ivery and Linda Halopka-Ivery are asking the court to strike down Wisconsin’s 2006 constitutional amendment that bans same-sex marriage.
An October 2013 Marquette Law School poll found that 53 percent of Wisconsin registered voters support marriage equality with an additional “24 percent favoring civil unions and 19 percent saying there should be no legal recognition for same-sex unions.”
The AP reports that the “lawsuit says the couple lives in Milwaukee County and married in San Diego. They allege Wisconsin’s gay marriage ban denies them federal rights afforded to opposite-sex married couples, violating their rights to equal protection and due process. They also argue the state is improperly restricting gay marriage based on religious opposition to same-sex marriages.”
The state attorney general, Republican J. B. Van Hollen, is expected to defend the law in court.
A separate, federal lawsuit against the state of Wisconsin, Wolf v. Walker, is scheduled to begin August 25.