SCOTUS To Hear Case on Gay Marriage, Nationwide Implications Possible

Going into the Martin Luther King. Jr holiday weekend — fittingly — the Supreme Court announced it will hear arguments for four consolidated cases that could bring about national legalization of same-sex marriage.

Gay marriage is at present legal in 36 states plus D.C., with the remaining 14 states having explicit bans.

The two questions to be answered are:

1. Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?
2. Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?

(The Fourteenth Amendment defines citizenship and grants equal protection of the law.)

SCOTUS Blog explains these arguments to take place in this season’s final session, April 20 to 29. This means an answer will come early in June, making 2015’s Pride season a question mark up to the last minute — an occurrence that’s been frequent as of late, but, depending on how the Court rules here, could also be coming to its end.

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Reporting on the grant of these writs for the New York Times, Adam Liptak points out, “The pace of change on same-sex marriage, in both popular opinion and in the courts, has no parallel in the nation’s history.”