Here are some other opinions on what the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of the Defense of Marriage Act means for Georgia’s 2004 constitutional ban on same-sex unions. (These comments were originally published online at ajc.com on June 26 by AJC staff writer Jim Galloway.)
Attorney General Sam Olens
“The Supreme Court of the United States held 5-4 that Congress violated equal protection when it defined marriage for federal purposes differently from the way the state of New York defined it. I disagree with the court’s decision. But it is important to understand what the decision does and does not mean.
“ [The] decision rests on the basic assumption — with which I strongly agree — that the power to define marriage is a power traditionally reserved to the states. The decision does not affect existing state definitions of marriage; in fact, it explicitly says that it is limited to marriages recognized by states as lawful. I agree with the chief justice that this limitation means what it says. The definition of marriage adopted by Georgia’s voters is unaffected by today’s decision.”
Anthony Michael Kreis, J.D. and Ph.D candidate at the University of Georgia’s School of Public and International Affairs
“The Prop 8 decision, Perry, doctrinally does no work to advance or impede a constitutional challenge of Georgia’s state constitutional same-sex marriage ban under the United States Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
“The DOMA decision, however, sends a strong signal that a constitutional challenge to Georgia’s ban (or any state for that matter) may well render the ban void. That being said, given there are challenges currently underway out of Hawaii, Nevada and Michigan, there is a reason to believe that those cases would make their way to the Supreme Court well before any case from Georgia would.”
Stefan Turkheimer, appellate and trial lawyer with Turkheimer & Hadden, Atlanta
“I imagine there will be a bevy of cases from a number of states that currently ban gay marriage that consist of a legally married same-sex couple moving from a state that allows gay marriage to a state that does not.
“Georgia will be one of those, probably, but the 11th Circuit isn’t the ideal place for it to be ruled upon. The lead case will likely come from a state with a similar anti-same-sex marriage provision, but in a slightly friendlier circuit. The 9th (Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco) would be ideal, but SCOTUS hates decisions from the 9th.
“What is interesting is that the decision was made on quasi-equal protection grounds on the Fifth Amendment, which is made applicable to the states through the 14th. Despite the holding limiting the decision to Section 3 of DOMA (and not Section 2, which is what states rely upon in denying marriages from other states), it will be difficult to limit the reasoning in the same manner.”
