To the surprise of most, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to hear any of the seven gay-marriage cases that it had been asked by appellants to review. In effect, the nation's top court has decided to duck the issue, leaving the various courts of appeals to handle it as they see fit within their regions of jurisdiction.
The impact of that odd decision is potentially chaotic. By declining to intervene, the Supreme Court has made gay marriage almost immediately legal in Utah, Virginia, Indiana, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, all of which had tried to ban it. In fairly short order, gay marriage bans should also be thrown out in West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Wyoming, Colorado and Kansas. Once today's non-decision plays out, 30 states will allow the ceremony, however grudgingly for some, while 20 states will still be able to ban it, at least temporarily.
Sound complicated? It is, and that's the Supreme Court's fault. We have 12 courts of appeals around the country. Three of those courts have ruled that state bans on gay marriage are unconstitutional because they treat people differently under the law and have no rational basis -- only prejudice -- for doing so. Gay marriage is now or soon will be legal in every state within those three circuits. (So far, no appellate courts have found marriage bans constitutional.)
The remaining nine courts are either in the process of deciding the issue or are waiting until such cases can come before them. A third option for appellate courts -- waiting until the Supreme Court steps in to solve the matter -- is apparently not viable any longer. (Georgia is part of the Atlanta-based 11th Circuit, which has yet to hear a case. However, a case decided in August by a federal judge in Florida in favor of gay marriage may be headed its way, and a case in Georgia has yet to be heard at the district court level.)
The confusion created by the Supreme Court is bad enough, with states scrambling to adjust laws and policies. For example, nobody really knows whether states that still ban gay marriage are legally bound to recognize gay marriages performed in other states. In some circuits they will; in others they won't. It's just a mess.
Even worse, the Supreme Court still retains the right to decide at some later date that the appellate courts are wrong, that state bans on gay marriage somehow ARE constitutional. At that point, the legal status of many of the marriages now being performed would become suspect if not outright invalid. The legal, social, economic and emotional impact of such a decision would be so profound as to be almost inconceivable. Yet the court has made it conceivable.
Nobody knows why the justices have taken this position, and they don't seem inclined to explain it to the rest of us. It's most likely the result of some political gamesmanship among the court's nine members, but in doing so, they're playing with the lives of real people and leaving them in limbo. It's irresponsible and unnecessarily cruel.
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