The U.S. Supreme Court has denied a request to review a Massachusetts court's decision that legalized gay marriage in that state.
The justices declined Nov. 29 without comment a request from a group of Massachusetts legislators to review a decision by the state's Supreme Judicial Court that legalized same-sax marriage in the commonwealth.
The group had argued that the decision denied Massachusetts voters the right to govern themselves through their legislature, thus violating the federal Constitution's guarantee of a representative form of government for each state.
But in June, a three-judge panel of the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held unanimously that the legislators who filed the suit did not have standing to sue because they did not prove they had suffered any actual injury.
The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's decision did not violate the federal Constitution, the appeals court said, because Massachusetts voters may overrule that decision in 2006, by approving a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.
The argument by the legislators overreached, the appeals court said in its unsigned June ruling, because the Massachusetts court “has not abolished the legislature. The amendment process enshrined in the Massachusetts Constitution is purposely designed to be slow; that choice is itself a result of the state's republican form of government.”
Conservatives said the Supreme Court's decision not to hear the Massachusetts case is further proof that a federal constitutional amendment is needed.
“It is increasingly clear that the ultimate solution to the problem of judicial tyranny will not come from other judges but from the people themselves,” said Peter Sprigg, policy director for the Family Research Council, in a statement.
Associated Baptist Press