High court countdown

Michigan marriage equality goes to the Supreme Court

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Whether same-sex couples have the right to marriage in the U.S. is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, led by a case originating in Michigan.

On Jan. 16 the court agreed to hear a quartet of cases coming from the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals; including DeBoer v Snyder, a case from Michigan challenging the constitutionality of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. Parties to the cases will have a total of two and half hours to address two specific legal questions, the court ordered.

The first question, which is most germane to the Michigan case, is: Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex? The second question is: Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state? The first question will have 90 minutes for oral arguments, while the second question will have a total of 60 minutes. Final briefs will be due to the high court April 17.

Ingham County Clerk Barb Byrum was one of four county clerks married couples in March 2013 during a short window which opened when federal Judge Bernard Friedman shot down Michigan’s marriage ban and did not stay his ruling. In all, during just about 24 hours, 323 same-sex couples in Michigan were married.

The day before the high court agreed to hear the marriage cases, a federal judge refused to issue a stay on his decision ordering the state of Michigan to recognize the 300-plus marriages conducted in the brief window in March 2013.

Those marriages, Michigan officials have said, were legally performed, but cannot be recognized. Under the federal court ruling, however, the state will have 21 days to appeal. If they fail at appeal, or don’t appeal, the state will be required to make all the rights and responsibilities of marriage – and benefits – available to these couples.

Byrum says she is “extremely optimistic” that the high court will deliver a ruling which will make marriage equality the law of the land. She believes the court will strike down marriage bans and rule that states must recognized marriages conducted in other states.

On the federal level, Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that the Obama administration will file a brief to support striking down sex marriage bans.

"It is time for our nation to take another critical step forward to ensure the fundamental equality of all Americans — no matter who they are, where they come from, or whom they love,” Holder said in a statement.

Emily Horvath, a local attorney and law professor, said a favorable ruling from the Supreme Court will be important. She and her wife have been married since December 2013. They went to Canada to get married following the high court’s ruling in June 2013 striking down a part of the Defense of Marriage Act, thus allowing the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages.

Despite that, simple things that most married couples take for granted can be frustrating, she says. Like filing taxes.

While on a federal level the couple could file a joint return, on a state level, they were required to file single returns.

“It’s the little things like that, that remind you that, ‘no you’re not the same anyone else. Your marriage is not the same as a heterosexual marriage,’” Horvath says.

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