Chief Justice John Roberts has asked same-sex marriage proponents to respond to an emergency request from Virginia to halt a circuit court ruling letting gay couples marry in the state.
Roberts, who handles such requests for the region, gave a deadline of Monday at 5 p.m. for the response, according to SCOTUSblog.
The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request to halt its ruling. If a “stay” is not granted by the Supreme Court, same-sex marriages will be allowed to move forward as of next Thursday in Virginia.
Granting a stay is largely a procedural matter. The Supreme Court is expected to have the final word on the larger question of whether same-sex marriage is a constitutional right.
This is SOP, folks, so don’t get your hopes up that marriage equality will actually come to Virginia next week.
In other words, the odds are very, very, very strong that SCOTUS will not stay the Fourth Circuit’s decision. Marriage equality will come to Virginia, but it will be next year (or the year after), not next week.
The state of Virginia is not making the request. Attorneys representing a county clerk in northern Virginia on Thursday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to stay the decision by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond.
Let’s see what Sado-federalist, Roberts will do next.
Don’t you mean to say that odds are strong that SCOTUS will stay the Fourth Circuit’s decision? Not a lawyer here so perhaps I misunderstand “stay” vs “not stay”.
LD
Shouldn’t we stop calling marriage “gay marriage” depending on who’s involved? Either one can marry who they love, or they can’t because someone else presumes to stand in their way in the name of the mass psychosis to which they’ve subscribed.
Do the conservative SC justices have any idea how to integrate social mores of the times with current legal issues? Because if they stay gay marriage and eventually rule against it, they’re going to look like total out of touch fools in ten years time. Not that they don’t look like that now. But in few years, they will simply look like ridiculous old men. A bunch of geezers that tried to stem the tide of social progression, hiding behind a bench and legalese.