COLUMBUS — The U.S. Supreme Court said today it will hear appeals of rulings from a federal court that bucked recent trends and upheld bans on same-sex marriage in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
After previously declining to stand in the way of decisions that struck down bans on gay marriage, allowing such marriages to take place, the high court has accepted challenges to the decisions by the Cincinnati-based U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The move came as little surprise given the conflict created when the 6th Circuit disagreed with decisions by other federal appeals courts.
The high court will likely hear arguments in coming months with a final decision expected before the end of June. The court decided to hear the cases during its conference behind closed doors today.
Thirty-five states have legalized same-sex marriage, most of them through court rulings rather than ballot or legislative action.
Voters in Ohio and Michigan — with affirmative votes of 62 percent and 59 percent, respectively — amended their constitutions in 2004 to define marriage as being between one man and one woman.
Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton, a Columbus Republican appointed by President George W. Bush, wrote the court’s majority opinion affecting six cases from the four states under the court’s jurisdiction. He conceded that recognition of gay marriage is likely inevitable, but he said that such change should be made by the public through the political process rather than through the courts.
Unlike cases from Michigan and Kentucky, the cases in Ohio and Tennessee are not direct confrontations with their refusals to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Instead, they challenge the states’ refusal to recognize such marriages legally performed in other states.
The U.S. Supreme Court has danced around the issue of whether states have the right to prohibit same-sex marriage. It struck down a federal ban in 2013 and has refused to stand in the way of other federal rulings that have allowed gay marriage.
There has been movement for a potential ballot issue in Ohio to ask voters to undo the 2004 ban, but no petitions have been filed for a ballot date.
First Published January 16, 2015, 8:49 p.m.
