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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

End of the Road for States Opposed to Gay Marriage

WASHINGTON (CN) - Utah and other states told that their bans on gay marriage were unconstitutional will not find relief from the Supreme Court, the justices said Monday.

Such decisions sprang out of the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Windsor last year that found it unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the benefits enjoyed by married couples. Though Windsor involved a federal law, many courts have since used that case as precedent for overturning state bans against same-sex marriage.

Utah and Virginia were among seven states that saw their bans struck down as unconstitutional in recent months, but the Supreme Court blocked the rulings from taking effect until it could consider petitions by those states for certiorari.

Though 17 states asked the court to take up one of the seven cases on the issue, the court did not include any of those cases among 11 certiorari grants Thursday.

Today the court denied all seven petitions: Bogan v. Baskin (Indiana); Herbert v. Kitchen (Utah); McQuigg v. Bostic (Virginia); Rainey v. Bostic (Virginia); Schaefer v. Bostic (Virginia); Smith v. Bishop (Oklahoma) and Walker v. Wolf (Wisconsin).

It did not issue any new grants.

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