Republican Attorney General has just filed a U.S. Supreme Court appeal of a federal appeals court ruling that struck down Utah’s same-sex marriage ban.Â
Sean Reyes, Utah’s appointed Attorney General, has just filed his writ of certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court, appealing a federal judge’s ruling that struck down the Beehive State’s ban on same-sex marriage. On December 20, 2013, a federal judge ruled, in Kitchen v. Herbert, that Utah’s same-sex marriage ban violates the U.S. Constitution. On June 25, 2014, in an historic ruling — the first federal appeals court ruling since the Supreme Court struck down DOMA 364 days prior — Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage was again found to be unconstitutional.
Despite those rulings, and despite the fact that nearly three dozen federal court rulings have all died with same-sex marriage supporters since the Supreme Court ruled on Edie Windsor’s DOMA case last year, Attorney General Reyes is taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Reyes is running for election in November.
Freedom to Marry notes that this is “the first petition to be filed seeking review in a marriage case by the nation’s highest court. Defendants in cases out of Oklahoma (Bishop v. Smith and Bostic v. Schaefer) have also indicated that they will file similar petitions.”
Since last June, when the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the core of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, 35 consecutive rulings have come down in favor of the freedom to marry in state, federal, and federal appellate courts. Marriage litigation is pending in every state without the freedom to marry, and pro-marriage decisions are pending before federal appellate courts in the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th Circuits.Â
His 212-page petition asks the Court,
Read the full filing, courtesy of our friends at Equality Case Files, at Scribd.
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Image:Â Michael Adam Ferguson and J Seth Anderson, the first same-sex couple to marry in Utah. Photo via Facebook
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