Because the Supreme Court declined to review it, the Fourth Circuit ruling striking down Virginia’s ban on same-sex marriage will also become law in North Carolina.
- photo by Bob Geary
- Paula Womack and Jane Weidig were married in Massachusetts. Soon, their marriage will be recognized in North Carolina.
This means Amendment One will be unconstitutional as a matter of federal law. North Carolina will be required to recognize same-sex marriages from other states and, presumably, to allow same-sex couples to be married in our state.
I wrote about the Fourth Circuit decision a few weeks ago. The Supreme Court just opened its term and acted quickly on all the same-sex marriage rulings from circuit courts, declining to hear any of them.
Challenges to Amendment One are pending in a federal district court in Winston-Salem. The judge hearing those cases — who put them on hold waiting to see what the Supreme Court would do — must now apply the Fourth Circuit ruling and will probably do so very quickly.
Conservatives who want Attorney General Roy Cooper to keep fighting this don’t seem to get it that it’s over and Amendment One cannot be defended in a federal district court — a higher federal court has already decided the issue and the Supreme Court has, in effect, gone along.
