UPDATED: Judge Rules on Same-Sex Marriages in Michigan

Updated with reaction, more details at 12:45 p.m.

A federal judge ruled Thursday that Michigan must recognize the marriages of about 300 same-sex couples who wed during the brief, 24-hour period that gay marriage was legal in the state last spring, the Detroit Free Press and WDIV-TV are reporting

U.S. District Court Judge Mark Goldsmith called the marriages a“fundamental right,” Goldsmith wrote in the opinion validating the marriages. “In these circumstances, what the state has joined together, it may not put asunder…,”

Last spring, Gov. Rick Snyder acknowledged the marriages were legal, but said the state wouldn’t recognize them, placing those couples in a sort of legal limbo until a final court ruling on the matter.

A panel of three judges from 6th U.S. Circuit Court upheld the ban and the couple at the center of the case – Hazel Park nurses April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse – filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court hasn’t said yet if it will hear an appeal of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court decision upholding the ban this term, but an announcement could be coming yet this week.

Judge: State Doesn’t Try to Surmount Constitutional Hurdle

Goldsmith said the on-again, off-again status as courts sort out gay marriage in Michigan doesn’t matter.

“Even though the court decision that required Michigan to allow same-sex couples to marry has now been reversed on appeal, the same-sex couples who married in Michigan during the brief period when such marriages were authorized acquired a status that state officials may not ignore absent some compelling interest – a constitutional hurdle that the defense does not even attempt to surmount,” Goldsmith wrote.

He argues the state’s refusal to recognize the marriages “divests plaintiffs of an essential human dimension in their lives – the legally recognized bond of committed intimacy in a marriage that was solemnized and recognized as valid by the challenging state – the loss of which unquestionably wounds them deeply.”

Attorney General Bill Schuette said in a statement that the state will review the opinion.

“We are reviewing Judge Goldsmith’s decision but as I have said repeatedly, the sooner the United States Supreme Court makes a decision on this issue the better it will be for Michigan and America,” he said.

ACLU Hails Decision

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan, which filed a lawsuit on on behalf of eight couples who married immediately after Judge Bernard Friedman struck down the state’s 10-year voter-backed ban on same-sex-marriage and before the 6th Circuit stayed the decision against the ban, hailed the opinion as a step forward in gay couples’ battle against discrimination.

“These marriages are cherished and valid – same as any other– and it’s only right that the courts and our country recognize as much,” Jay Kaplan, staff attorney for the ACLU of Michigan LGBT Project said in a statement.

“All these couples have ever asked is that they be able to love and protect their families without being discriminated against,” he said. “With this decision, they can finally begin to move away from uncertainty and unfairness and toward the fulfillment of their shared dreams.”

He said the fact that the couples who married last spring are gay is irrelevant. Once a marriage license is issued, the state “cannot withdraw the status that it has awarded, even if the couples had no right to demand to be married in the first place.”

To rule otherwise, Goldsmith wrote, “could catastrophically undermine the stability that marriage seeks to create.”

Ruling Doesn’t Take Immediate Effect

Goldsmith put the injunction requiring the state to recognize the marriages – something the federal government agreed to do – on hold for 21 days.

That means it won’t immediately affect the lead plaintiffs in the case, longtime partners Glenna DeJong and Marsha Casper, who were among the couples who flocked to the handful of county courthouses that issued marriage licenses after the Friedman’s landmark opinion last spring.

“Being legally married and receiving the benefits and protections of marriage are not, and cannot be, mutually exclusive,” DeJong said in a news release. “Yet the couples married on March 22nd were caught in a paradox – we were married and we were not.

“It’s stressful having to work so hard for something that seems so simple,” she said. “Other married couples don’t have to jump through these hoops and become activists just to be treated equally. We don’t want special rights, just the same rights afforded to other married couples.”

The U.S. Supreme Court could decide by Friday if it will hear the Michigan appeal of the 6th Circuit ruling upholding the ban, The Detroit News reports.

The 6th Circuit ruling also upholds bans in Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. Ohio same-sex couples have also asked the justices to review a case that focuses on that state’s refusal to recognize out-of-state gay marriages because of its own ban.

The 6th Circuit ruling was the first appeals court defeat for advocates of gay marriage, now legal in 35 states.

Virtually the same situation exists in Utah, where state officials refused to recognize gay marriages performed during a brief window between a a judge’s ruling that the state’s ban was unconstitutional and a stay of the decision pending appeal.

A federal district court in Utah ordered the state to recognize those marriages in June. The 10th U.S. Circuit ultimately affirmed same-sex marriage in Utah, but the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to intervene.

More about this on Patch:

• 6th Circuit Could Be Pivotal in Gay Marriage Debate
• 6th Circuit’s Marathon Gay Marriage Hearing Signals Historic Shift
• Federal Judge Strikes Down Michigan’s Gay Marriage Ban
• 6th Circuit Stays Historic Gay Marriage Ruling
• Governor: Gay Marriages Legal, But State Won’t Recognize Them
• Supreme Court Clears Way For Gay Marriage In Virginia, 4 Other States
• Will Supreme Court Justices Hear Michigan Gay Marriage Case?

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