32 States Urge Supreme Court To Rule On Same-Sex Marriage

32 State Attorneys General late yesterday filed amicus briefs urging the U.S. Supreme Court to take up a same-sex marriage case.

Attorneys General from 15 states that have already extended the institution of marriage to same-sex couples yesterday filed a brief urging the nation’s highest court to rule in favor of same-sex marriage. Led by Colorado, Attorneys General from 17 states that have banned same-sex couples from marrying also filed a brief urging the court to rule, but did not ask for a decision in favor of or against same-sex marriage. 

The brief by the 15 Attorneys General was led by Massachusetts AG Martha Coakley, her state being the first in the nation over a decade ago to allow same-sex couple the freedom to marry. 

The Massachusetts brief, the AP reports, asks “justices to take up three cases from Virginia, Utah and Oklahoma and overturn bans.” The Colorado brief “asked the court to hear cases from Utah and Oklahoma to clear up a ‘morass’ of lawsuits.”

“The brief,” Coakley says in a statement, “refutes the suggestion that states need more time to debate this issue and to ‘experiment’ with same-sex marriage.”

“These arguments,” the amicus brief (PDF) reads, “ignore the fundamental nature of the right at issue and unfairly minimize the deprivation that same-sex couples and their families suffer by their exclusion from the vast framework of protections, benefits, and obligations conferred only by civil marriage. Moreover, marriage equality has been a reality for a decade and the evidence is clear: allowing same-sex couples to wed only strengthens the institution of civil marriage.”

The Massachusetts brief was signed by Attorneys General from California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Washington.

The Colorado brief was signed by Attorneys General from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

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