WASHINGTON, D.C. (AP) — The U.S. Supreme Court says it won’t stop same-sex marriages from beginning in Alabama on Monday.
The court on Monday morning denied the Alabama attorney general’s request to extend a hold on a judge’s ruling overturning the state’s ban on gay marriage. Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange had asked theSupreme Court to keep the decision on hold because justices are expected to issue a nationwide ruling on gay marriage later this year.
U.S. District Judge Callie Granade in January ruled that the Alabama ban was unconstitutional. She put a hold on her order until Monday to give the state time to appeal. Gay couples are lining up at courthouses seeking marriage licenses.
On Sunday night, Chief Justice Roy Moore sent an order to state probate judges ordering them to refuse to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. But the chief clerk for Montgomery County Probate Judge Steven Reed said he plans to issue them.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia dissented from the court’s decision not to block same-sex marriages. They also implied that the court’s other justices were tipping their hand in how they would rule when the same-sex marriage question comes before them again in the coming months.
“The court looks the other way as yet another federal district judge casts aside state laws without making any effort to preserve the status quo pending the court’s resolution of a constitutional question it left open,” Thomas wrote in the dissent joined by Scalia, per Bloomberg. “This acquiescence may well be seen as a signal of the court’s intended resolution of that question.
Dylan Scott contributed reporting.
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