Ruth Bader Ginsburg: Supreme Court Will Take A Gay Marriage Case – Suggests Decision Date

Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg says the nation’s highest court will definitely take a same-sex marriage case, and she suggests when the country will know the future of marriage equality.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg says the Supreme Court will not “duck” same-sex marriage. The 81-year old Associate Justice (all Supreme Court Justices are technically Associate Justices, except for the Chief Justice) told the AP today that she expects the Court to take a case and decide it no later than June of 2016, or possibly earlier. She did not specify which case, although it’s assumed it will be one (or several, possibly) of the many dozen making their way through the nation’s court system now.

The AP reports that Ginsburg “said attitudes have changed swiftly in favor of the right of same-sex couples to marry.”

In August of last year, Ginsburg became the first sitting Supreme Court justice to officiate at a same-sex wedding. She married Michael M. Kaiser and John Roberts (no relation to the Chief Justice) in Washington, D.C. 

“I think it will be one more statement that people who love each other and want to live together should be able to enjoy the blessings and the strife in the marriage relationship,” Ginsburg told the Washington Post at the time.

In October of last year, retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor also officiated at a same-sex wedding. She married a couple together for 36 years, Jeffrey Trammell and Stuart Serkin.

Jean Podrasky, an LGBT activist, the cousin of Chief Justice John Roberts, and an occasional contributor to The New Civil Rights Movement, last year on these pages wrote of Ginsburg’s siding with the majority to “toss out” the Prop 8 case on standing, allowing the lower court’s ruling to stand.

“I truly believe that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg knew exactly what she was doing by siding with throwing the case out on standing,” Podrasky wrote. “I think her idea was for us to slowly win over public approval before making same-sex marriage legal nationwide, to allow us to win state by state through the legislative process or the ballot box, and later to have the Supreme Court rule on this again in a couple of years.”

Those “couple of years” seem to be coming up quickly.

 

Image by Stanford Law via Flickr