U.S. District Court Judge Martin Feldman threw a curveball at the lawyers arguing either side of a case over gay marriage in Louisiana on Wednesday, deciding he will rule not only on whether same-sex marriages performed in other states should be recognized in Louisiana, but also whether gay and lesbian couples should be able to wed here.
Scores of similar lawsuits are working their way through courts across the country, some of them taking on recognition of existing marriages and others aiming more directly at the right to marry in a particular state. Some cases involve both issues.
The case before Feldman includes six couples, all arguing that Louisiana should recognize existing marriages performed elsewhere. The legal briefings that proceeded Wednesday’s court hearing stuck mainly with the issue of recognition.
But at the end of an hour and a half of oral arguments, Feldman said he wanted to hear debate on all of the questions involved, saying it would be unfair to the public to issue a “piecemeal” ruling.
“I feel uncomfortable resolving some issues one way or the other and not all the issues one way or another,” Feldman said, asking for additional briefs within 21 days and putting off a decision about whether to hear more oral arguments.
The judge’s decision will likely mean a brief delay in any ruling on the recognition issue, but could greatly speed up a decision on whether same-sex couples can get a marriage licence in Louisiana. Under the court’s original instructions, now moot, lawyers for both sides were to argue over recognition, allow the full appeals process to play out, and then take up the case of a gay couple who attempted to get a marriage license in New Orleans and got turned down.
Another outstanding issue before Feldman is whether Louisiana is violating the First Amendment’s guarantee of free speech by forcing married same-sex couples to list themselves as single on tax returns.
Instead of taking each question on separately, Feldman appears ready to draw up one ruling on all of them, though he dropped no conclusive hints on Wednesday about which way he might be leaning.
Meanwhile, just minutes after oral arguments wrapped up in New Orleans, gay marriage proponents got their first victory at the circuit court level, a development that could reverberate in Louisiana.
A panel of judges for the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver upheld the ruling of a Utah judge who struck down that state’s ban on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.
That’s good for gay marriage proponents in Louisiana, because it means that even if they lose their case before Feldman and the 5th Circuit Court, the U.S. Supreme Court would be more likely to step in. The Supreme Court Justices haven’t answered definitively whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, but a split decision between two circuit courts would put pressure on them to take up the issue.
