32 states to SCOTUS: Review gay marriage

As same-sex marriage bans in Indiana and Wisconsin were being overturned Thursday, 32 states asked the Supreme Court to take another look at the issue, according to a report.

Fifteen states that allow gay marriage filed a brief asking the high court to review cases from Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia, whose bans were recently thrown out by lower courts, The Associated Press said. Massachusetts, the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, spearheaded this group’s request.

{mosads}Joining Massachusetts in the brief were California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Washington.

Seventeen other states, meanwhile, that have same-sex marriage bans in place also asked the justices to review the Oklahoma and Utah cases. Colorado led the charge for this group’s request. 

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, West Virginia and Wisconsin joined Colorado in the filing.

The states ask the court to clear up the “morass” of lawsuits and conflicting rulings surrounding the issue.

Lower courts reversed the bans in Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia this summer, though a few rulings have been put on hold pending appeal. Some states have appealed directly to the Supreme Court.

A court in Louisiana upheld that state’s ban this week, and last month, a judge in Tennessee ruled that refusing to recognize marriages performed in other states was not a constitutional violation.

In 2013, the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, the federal law that allowed states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriage that was authorized by other states. The justices ruled that the law violated the Fifth Amendment by treating some state-sanctioned marriages differently.