Today, Nebraska child welfare officials moved to stop enforcing a two-decade-old policy barring gay and lesbian couples from obtaining state foster parent licenses. The change in procedure, according to a report in the Omaha World Herald, came quietly and was confirmed Friday by Gov. Pete Ricketts’ spokesman, who said that the sexual orientation of people…
Today Federal District Judge Joseph Bataillon issued an injunction against Nebraska’s ban on marriage equality, requiring all state officials to treat same-sex couples equally for the purposes of marriage effective March 9. In Waters v. Ricketts, the ACLU sued the state on behalf of same-sex couples, arguing last month that Nebraska’s ban on marriage equality…
U.S. District Judge Karen E. Schreier ruled today that denying marriage for same-sex couples in South Dakota is unconstitutional. The ruling is stayed, meaning same-sex couples cannot yet receive marriage licenses in South Dakota. The ruling was in the case Rosenbrahn v. Daugaard, which was filed in May of 2014 by private lawyers with National…
http://youtu.be/-jDpJm1TgFs A court in Uganda struck down the country’s anti-homosexuality law, Friday amid cheers from a packed courtroom in the capital Kampala. According to a report in the New York Times, a panel of five judges announced that the Anti-Homosexuality Act, which punishes some homosexual behavior with life in prison, was invalid because it had…
Thursday, Monroe County Circuit Judge Luis Garcia, appointed by Republican Governor Jeb Bush, ruled against Florida’s constitutional amendment banning marriage equality, making the Sunshine State the latest to see such a ban struck down in court since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic marriage rulings last June. In Huntsman v. Heavilin, attorneys with the…
Wednesday Adams County District Court Judge C. Scott Crabtree ruled against Colorado’s constitutional amendment banning marriage equality, making the Centennial State the latest to see such a ban struck down in court since the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its historic marriage rulings last June. In Brinkman v. Long, attorneys from Wilcox & Ogden, P.C. and…
In a historic day, a federal judge in Indiana struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, followed almost immediately by the first appellate level win since last year’s Windsor decision as the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court ruling that struck down Utah’s ban late last year. “I remember like it…
When the United States Supreme Court ruled in 2003 in Lawrence vs. Texas on a 6-3 vote that the state had violated the liberty of the plaintiffs protected by substantive due process under the Fourteenth Amendment, it not only legalized consensual sex between two adults regardless of gender, but it overturned Bowers vs. Hardwick (1986)…
Paul Smith, the third leg of a victorious legal stool that includes Theodore Olson and David Boise (Prop. 8), has argued that same-sex marriage will be a reality in the United States by 2015 at the earliest and 2016 at the latest. Smith, who successfully argued Windsor v. United States in 2013 – which struck…
Today U.S. District Judge John E. Jones, III ruled that Pennsylvania’s law banning marriage equality is unconstitutional. Pennsylvania becomes the tenth state where a federal judge has struck down a marriage ban since the U.S. Supreme Court issued their two marriage-related rulings last year. Just yesterday a federal judge in Oregon struck down that state’s…
