WASHINGTON (ABP) — The Supreme Court has denied a request to review a Massachusetts court's decision that legalized gay marriage in that state.
Returning to the bench Nov. 29 after their Thanksgiving break, the justices declined without comment a request from a group of socially conservative Massachusetts legislators to review a decision by the state's Supreme Judicial Court that legalized same-sax marriage in the commonwealth.
The group, represented by the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, 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.
In a brief filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, Liberty Counsel attorney Matthew Staver said the justices should hear the case because voters in Massachusetts had a constitutional right “to live in a republican form of government free from tyranny, whether that comes at the barrel of a gun or by the decree of a court.”
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 but allowing “civil unions” between gay partners.
The argument by the Liberty Council 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.”
The controversy erupted in November 2003 when the Massachusetts court ruled that the state's constitution requires it to offer marriage licenses on an equal basis to both homosexuals and heterosexuals. The decision set off a backlash across the country, with nearly a dozen states adopting constitutional amendments to ban same-sex marriage. It also gave steam to an effort to amend the federal Constitution to ban gay marriage.
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. “That is why the electorates of 13 states have amended their state constitutions in recent months to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman.”
White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, asked about the court's decision during his regular Nov. 29 press briefing, said it deals with federal-versus-state issues and does not mean the court would decline to entertain a future challenge to the federal law banning same-sex marriage.
“There is some question of whether or not [the federal Defense of Marriage Act] will be upheld over time,” McClellan told reporters. “And the president believes that [marriage] is an enduring institution in our society. That's why he has fought to move forward on a constitutional process that would allow the states and the people in those states to be involved in this decision.”
The case is Largess vs. Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, No. 04-420.