A Kentucky couple today sued the state, seeking to force it to issue same-sex marriage licenses after a federal judge ruled earlier this week that the state must recognize the unions if they are performed in other states or countries.
The lawsuit filed in US District Court in Louisville seeks to build on that earlier ruling by raising the issue of whether Kentucky should sanction them if they take place in Kentucky.
The suit comes amid a flurry of rulings and other legal activity as activists push more states to recognize gay marriages. A federal judge in Virginia late yesterday struck down that state's ban, ruling it was unconstitutional, a first in the socially conservative Southeast.
Also, activists in Nevada yesterday launched a campaign to put a measure on the 2016 ballot giving voters the option to change the state constitution to allow gay marriage, and lawmakers in Wisconsin backed a similar proposal there. Lawsuits in Alabama and Louisiana are seeking to push those states to either acknowledge or allow same-sex unions.
In Virginia, US District Judge Arenda Wright Allen issued a stay of her order while it is appealed, meaning that gay couples in Virginia still will not be able to marry until the case is ultimately resolved. Both sides believe the case won't be settled until the US Supreme Court decides to hear it or one like it. Marriage-equality cases are now active in 24 of the 33 states that do not allow same-sex marriage.
The US Supreme Court set the stage for the wave of litigation last June, when it ordered the federal government to recognise valid same-sex marriages, but stopped short of striking down state laws banning them. Gay-rights activists hope that one or more of the lawsuits will reach the high court and lead to nationwide legalisation.
In overturning Kentucky law, US District Judge John G Heyburn II ruled that the 2004 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage treated "gay and lesbian persons differently in a way that demeans them."
The ruling only requires Kentucky to recognise the marriages of gay and lesbian couples performed legally in other places. It does not deal with the question of whether the state can be required to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. That issue wasn't brought up in the four lawsuits that triggered the ruling.
Heyburn noted that recent US Supreme Court rulings and his opinion in the Kentucky case "suggest a possible result to that question.
