Michigan is the latest state where a U.S. district court judge has struck down a state law barring same-sex marriage. The case involved a lesbian couple raising three special-needs adopted children who sued to marry so that both parents could legally adopt all the children. The state joins court victories within the past few months in Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Utah, and Texas.
The ruling in Michigan, however, is the first in that series which came from a full courtroom trial. The other decisions were from pleas for temporary or preliminary rulings, based primarily upon legal arguments. The only other trials to determine marriage equality within a state are those in Hawaii (1996) and California (2010). Other judges nullifying state same-sex marriage bans have put their rulings on hold because of appeals to higher courts. Friedman, however, issued an order permanently barring state officials from enforcing the state constitutional ban and state laws that implemented it.
The state “lost sight of what this case is truly about: people,†U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman wrote last Friday when he ruled that the lesbian couple could marry. “No court record of this proceeding could ever fully convey the personal sacrifice of these two plaintiffs who seek to ensure that the state may no longer impair the rights of their children and the thousands of others now being raised by same-sex couples.â€
Within 24 hours, over 300 same-sex couples had received marriage licenses, and at least 50 same-sex couples had married in just one county. As in the other five states where the marriage ban was struck down recently, an emergency stay stopped the marriages until this Wednesday “in order to allow a more reasoned consideration of the motion to stay,†according to a three-judge appeals court panel. Ten years after Michigan voters added an amendment to the state constitution mandating that marriage exist only between “one man and one woman,†56 percent of them agree that marriage equality is a constitutional right and oppose the decade-old ban.
In other marriage equality news, U.S. District Court Judge Aleta Trauger has denied to put Tennessee’s recognition of three same-sex couples’ marriages on hold. The ruling is only for these specific couples and only for recognition of their marriage within the state, not for their marrying in Tennessee.  In Kentucky, however, U.S. District Court Judge John Heyburn has put a hold on the state’s recognition of same-sex couples marriages granted out of state until the state’s governor can appeal the trial court ruling. He stated that the decision was made to avoid confusion.
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum has declared that same-sex couples can get married in that state if a federal judge declares the state’s marriage equality ban unconstitutional. The state is in the process of putting an initiative on the fall ballot to overturn a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. The case goes before U.S. District Judge Michael McShane on April 23. Rosenblum had already announced that she would not defend the ban on marriage equality.
