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ACLU: Supreme Court Decision Could Boost Gay Marriage In Florida
October 7, 2014
With the U.S. Supreme Court clearing the way for same-sex marriages in other states, gay-rights supporters said Monday they will ask a federal judge to follow suit in Florida.
U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle in August struck down Florida’s ban on same-sex marriages, but he also placed a stay on the ruling while cases from Virginia, Oklahoma and Utah were pending at the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices declined Monday to hear those cases and similar cases from Indiana and Wisconsin, giving victories to gay-marriage supporters who had won in lower courts.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, which represents plaintiffs in the challenge to Florida’s ban, quickly said it will ask Hinkle to lift the stay on his August decision. In a 
prepared statement, ACLU attorney Daniel Tilley said “we are now one step closer to the day when every Florida family can have the respect, protection and responsibilities that come with marriage.”
“We are preparing now to take the necessary steps to ask the court in our case to lift the stay and allow Florida couples who are married out of state or who wish to be married to have those marriages respected by their home state as soon as possible,” Tilley said.
Hinkle’s decision finding Florida’s voter-approved ban unconstitutional was similar to rulings by state circuit-court judges in South Florida. Attorney General Pam Bondi, whose office is defending the gay-marriage ban, has pointed to the U.S. Supreme Court’s consideration of cases as a reason to put on hold at least some of the Florida legal battles.
Whitney Ray, a Bondi spokesman, gave little indication Monday how the attorney general might respond to the justices’ decision against hearing the cases.
“We are reviewing the impact of these decisions, as well as other cases around the country,” Ray said in an email.
But John Stemberger, president of the Florida Family Policy Council, which helped lead efforts to pass a 2008 constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, disputed arguments that the Supreme Court’s decision resolves the issue in Florida. Stemberger said it “has no legal effect in Florida and is only legally binding in the five states where the appeal was brought.”
“Unless and until a federal appeals court over Florida issues an adverse ruling, then Florida’s current valid marriage laws should continue to be upheld by the attorney general and Florida judges alike,” Stemberger said. “Further, no same-sex marriage licenses should be issued, and any decision otherwise by a Florida court or a clerk of court, would be irresponsible and illegitimate.”
Hinkle, who hears cases in Tallahassee, issued a strongly worded ruling Aug. 21 in favor of plaintiffs in two combined lawsuits challenging the gay-marriage ban. The plaintiffs included Florida couples who were married in other states where same-sex marriage is legal, a couple seeking to get married and the surviving spouse of a same-sex couple married in New York.
But while Hinkle found that the ban interfered with the couples’ constitutional rights, he also issued a stay that at least temporarily blocked same-sex marriages from taking place.
“There is a substantial public interest in implementing this decision just once — in not having, as some states have had, a decision that is on-again, off-again,” Hinkle wrote at the time. “This is so for marriages already entered elsewhere, and it is more clearly so for new marriages. There is a substantial public interest in stable marriage laws.”
In the order, Hinkle tied the length of the stay to the Virginia, Oklahoma and Utah cases, which had been filed in the Supreme Court.
Justices on Monday did not explain the reasons for not hearing those cases. But the decision could have ramifications for other states, along with Florida. In his statement, Tilley, the ACLU attorney, described legal same-sex marriage as a “clear historical inevitability.”
“We said that marriage equality is coming to Florida,” Tilley said. “After today’s message from the nation’s highest court, we know that it is coming even sooner.”
by Jim Saunders and Dara Kim, The News Service of Florida
Comments
14 Responses to “ACLU: Supreme Court Decision Could Boost Gay Marriage In Florida”
REGARDING THE STATEMENT:
“No government should interfere with the free associations of consenting adults”
Nor have they here. Those “consenting adults” have requested government involve itself in a matter which is essentially a contract betweej or among people. Without the contract with its legal obligations, as many as wish may associate with each other however they wish behind closed doors.
These want more. They want social acceptability via legal recognition. (Contemplate Article One, Section ten of The US Constitution, the contracts clause.) They also want monetary rewards associated with that contract. You telling them they shouldn’t be allowed to request that would violate their right to petition to correct what they believe to be a wrong.
And you already noted limitations when you required it to involve adults, no children forced into the marriage contract.
David for justice
The government should not be in the business of issuing marriage licenses. No government should interfere with the free associations of consenting adults.
CONTEMPLATING:
“They have destroyed the institution of marriage, something no other society has been able to do in all of recorded history.”
So nobody is married any longer?
If marriage depends on the courts, it was already in trouble.
I was just talking to a monument dealer. She told of a couple who had a pre-need double heart monument in the cemetery. The wife found the husband engaged in sexual congress with another lady. The soon to be non-wife had the stone returned to the quarries, cut his half off, put her broken half back up in the cemetery, delivered his broken half to his front step. (waste not, want not)
Cheating on your spouse is probably harder on the institution of marriage than letting somebody else get married. I already have the perfect wife. All other men and women will have to make do as best they can.
David for unbroken hearts
The court said Monday that it would not hear appeals from five states
whose same-sex marriage bans had been invalidated by lower federal courts.
When the highest court in the land goes off the reservation and declares
State law unconstitutional, and State constitutions unconstitutional,
where does one go to address the issue?
The SCOTUS is not the final say in any law, and they are not our rulers.
We the People are their rulers! And 1% does not overrule our Constitution either.
And Kimberly, if I die before my husband, he gets all of my benefits because I’ve been paying social security into the system for the past 25 years.
Social Security benefits are based on the contributions you paid into the system. If your husband worked for 40+ years and passes away before you, then you are entitled to draw on his contributions as his spouse. If you did not personally contribute into the system, then of course, when you pass your husband would not receive benefits. There would be none to pay him based on your contributions. Being straight or gay has nothing at all to do with how Social Security works. A gay couple would find themselves in your exact same position if one partner worked while the other didn’t.
They the government can legalize all they want but it will not be right in GODs eyes & that’s the only way to live is through him, without him we are nobody, no matter what some of us think & if we approve then we’re wrong too & also not living right with him. GOD made Adam & Eve, not Adam & Steve.
Fighting to keep gay couples from marrying has absolutely no effect on strengthening heterosexual marriages. If protection of marriage as a cultural institution is your goal, then logic dictates you allow any and all couples who wish to make those commitments to each other. The real issue destroying marriage is the availability of quick, no-fault divorces. Why don’t we see a crusade to ban divorce in the state constitution?
As a Christian, I believe in what the Bibles says. But, I don’t hate anyone.
IMO I think it’s unfair that if my husband dies, I would get his benefits, yet if I die first, my husband gets nothing. Gay couples who want to legally marry claim they should be entitled to the same benefits as we are, but from all I’ve read and heard, that isn’t the way it works. If “either” one should die, the other gets their “spouses” benefits.
How is this fair? Everyone is so worried about being PC these days. If I am rewarded for my husbands death, why not change the law so that my husband wouldn’t be punished after my death and get a mere $250 from SS to help w/ my burial?
I think government supporting any marriage is a Government endorsement of a religious concept.
Gay or Straight, I think Government should only provide a Certificate of Union to consenting adults. People should be able to make that legal commitment to those who are their family.
If the folks getting a government “Civil Union Certificate”, from their own personal beliefs decide to have a “religious marriage ceremony”, that’s their own business and government should have no part in that religious ceremony.
What people choose for their own lives should not be discriminated against by religious bigots trying to use laws to force their beliefs on to others.
America should be about Liberty and Freedom for each American, not about Religious Dogma and oppression.
I believe in equality, same sex couples should have the right to marry, enjoy a family, and grow old with their partner. Years ago Loving VS Virginia, fought for mixed race couples to marry. Live and let live. I am glad to have lived to see this day.
I also am against it, wish they’d let the people vote against it
God made Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve. Man for women. Women for men.
Seems to me people that do not support same sex marriage would support same sex marriage.
Same sex couples are not passing the gene into the next generation of humans.
Obviously the Supreme Court thinks the courts should write law and not state legislatures and governors. The courts are ruling on it, despite the American people’s will to ban it in many states.
Welcome to the United States of Sodom and Gomorrah. This Supreme Court will go down in history as just bad as the court that gave the country legalized murder. They have destroyed the institution of marriage, something no other society has been able to do in all of recorded history.