Federal Appeals Court Upholds Four States’ Same-Sex Marriage Bans

[cali]

The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld four states’ bans on same-sex couples’ marriages on Thursday, splitting with the decision of four other appellate courts and likely setting up a Supreme Court showdown on the issue.

Judge Jeffrey Sutton, writing for the 2-1 majority of the court, wrote the opinion upholding the constitutionality of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee’s bans — reversing trial court decisions striking down each ban, or the ban on recognition of same-sex couples’ marriages granted elsewhere, below.

“When the courts do not let the people resolve new social issues like this one, they perpetuate the idea that the heroes in these change events are judges and lawyers,” he wrote. “Better in this instance, we think, to allow change through the customary political processes, in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way.”

Specifically, Sutton wrote that the 6th Circuit — and all “inferior” courts — are still bound by the 1972 decision of the Supreme Court in Baker v. Nelson, in which the court dismissed a same-sex couple’s marriage claim “for want of a substantial federal question.” Many other courts, including several other appeals courts, have held that Baker is no longer good law in light of the Supreme Court’s development of pro-LGBT decisions since then.

Even outside of that, however, of the constitutional claims brought by same-sex couples — including “originalism; rational basis review; animus; fundamental rights; suspect classifications; evolving meaning” — Sutton concluded, “Not one of the plaintiffs’ theories, however, makes the case for constitutionalizing the definition of marriage and for removing the issue from the place it has been since the founding: in the hands of state voters.”

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http://www.buzzfeed.com/chrisgeidner/federal-appeals-court-upholds-michigan-same-sex-marriage-ban

[CurtEastPoint]

1. The majority judges = W Bush appointees; the dissenter, of course, Clinton appointee