Summary: the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals has become the latest federal appeals court to dash down same-sex marriage bans.
As of Thursday, the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago decided on the same-sex marriage controversy for Indiana and Wisconsin: banning same-sex marriages is unconstitutional. Up till now 20 federal courts in a row voted likewise, with only a United States Court in Louisiana upholding the state’s rights to restrictions.
With such a staggering string of decisions in favor of marriage equality, it seems almost fitting that the decision has grown easier to make. The three judges on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decided a mere nine days after hearing arguments.
Further, Judge Richard Posner, writing for the 3-0 decision, presented it as an obvious call:
“Our pair of cases is rich in detail but ultimately straightforward to decide. The challenged laws discriminate against a minority defined by an immutable characteristic, and the only rationale that the states put forth with any conviction— that same-sex couples and their children don’t need marriage because same-sex couples can’t produce children, intended or unintended—is so full of holes that it cannot be taken seriously.”
With the 7th Circuit Court being the third federal court to decide this summer, the cases nationwide are going to federal appeals courts, and invariably will end up all being finally decided by the Supreme Court within the next few years.
After all, when the 10th Circuit dashed the ban for Utah and Oklahoma, and the 4th Circuit dashed the ban for Virginia, stays were placed for the Supreme Court to decide the matter.
“The grounds advanced by Indiana and Wisconsin for their discriminatory policies are not only conjectural; they are totally implausible,” said the unanimous opinion, and they concluded that “We’ll see that the governments of Indiana and Wisconsin have given us no reason to think they have a ‘reasonable basis’ for forbidding same-sex marriage.”
With such categorically resonant words, what chance will marriage banning have with the Supreme Court?