By Marcia Coyle, From The National Law Journal

Bans on same-sex unions set for arguments in April.

This article has been updated to reflect that Judith Schaeffer is vice president of CAC.

The U.S. Supreme Court stepped into a historic legal, political and social debate on Jan. 16 when it agreed to decide whether states can prohibit same-sex marriages without violating the federal Constitution.

The addition of the same-sex marriage issue to a docket that already includes a high-stakes challenge to the federal health care reform law almost guarantees another potentially landmark term for the Roberts Court.

The justices granted review in four pending cases in which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld bans on marriage and the recognition of out-of-state marriages in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. The justices directed briefing on both the marriage and recognition issues.

Arguments before the high court will be in April with a decision by the end of June. The court allotted 90 minutes to the question of whether the 14th Amendment requires a state to license same-sex marriages. The court will give an hour to argument over whether the 14th Amendment requires states to recognize “a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state.”The four consolidated cases are: DeBoer v. Snyder (Michigan); Obergefell v. Hodges (Ohio); Bourke v. Beshear (Kentucky), and Tanco v. Haslam (Tennessee).

Same-sex marriages are allowed in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The greatest gains followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2013 decision striking down the definition of marriage in the federal Defense of Marriage Act in United States v. Windsor. A number of federal courts, faced with challenges to state bans, moved swiftly to find that those bans violated the equal-protection and due-process clauses of the 14th Amendment.

The justices ended months of speculation about when and if the court would resolve the national debate. Last October, the court denied review in seven cases in which marriage bans had been struck down by the Fourth, Seventh and Tenth circuits. At that point, however, there was no split on the issue among the federal appellate courts — a key criterion for granting review.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg last summer suggested in interviews that the justices might await a circuit split before entering the legal debate.

The chances of high court review changed dramatically on Nov. 6 when a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit, voting 2-1, broke ranks with its sister circuits and created the circuit split by upholding marriage and recognition bans in four states.

Writing for the panel majority, Judge Jeffrey Sutton said federal courts were still bound by a 1972 Supreme Court decision — Baker v. Nelson — in which the justices summarily dismissed a challenge to Minnesota’s marriage ban because it did not raise “a substantial federal ­question.”

Sutton also wrote it was better “to allow change through the customary political processes, in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-­minded way.”

Reaction to the high court’s grant of review was swift. Judith Schaeffer, vice president of the Constitutional Accountability Center, called the justices’ announcement “a key milestone” in the gay and lesbian movement for full equality. “The nation will soon see if Chief Justice Roberts is on the right side of the Constitution, not to mention the right side of history, when the court hands down its decision,” she said.

Mary Bonauto of Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, co-counsel in the Michigan case, said, “In the 10-plus years since same-sex couples started marrying in Massachusetts, thousands more have been able to marry across the United States, bringing them happiness and security — and harming no one. It is time to end the legal bans that single out same-sex couples for disrespect and instead allow them to make this unique promise to one another and provide greater protection and security for their families.”

Austin Nimocks, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, which has litigated against same-sex marriages in numerous states, said “the people of every state should remain free to affirm marriage as the union of a man and a woman in their laws. We are hopeful the Supreme Court will uphold the freedom of the people to affirm marriage.”

The Supreme Court “now has the opportunity to issue a long-overdue ruling to restore the freedom of the people to uphold marriage in their state laws as the union of a man and a woman,” said Tony Perkins, president of Family Research Council.

IMAGE: PRECEDENT Crowds gathered when the Supreme Court took up California’s marriage ban in 2013. Now the court is preparing to decide the constitutionality of such prohibitions nationwide. Diego M. Radzinschi

For more on this story go to: http://www.nationallawjournal.com/id=1202715464137/Justices-Take-Up-Marriage-Challenges#ixzz3PMkfZRVb