NORFOLK, Va. – A federal court in Virginia ruled yesterday that same-sex couples in the state will be allowed to marry and all same-sex couples legally married elsewhere will have their marriages recognized. However, marriages cannot yet take place since the ruling was suspended in anticipation of an appeal to the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In North Carolina, another Fourth Circuit state, the ACLU and the ACLU-NC Legal Foundation have filed a challenge to that state’s ban on marriage for same-sex couples in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina in Greensboro. That challenge, filed on behalf of six families across the state headed by same-sex couples, was filed in July 2013 as an amended complaint to a 2012 lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s ban on second parent adoptions.
“The ruling in Virginia is the latest example of how discriminatory bans on marriage for same-sex couples are impossible to square with the protections of the Constitution,” said Chris Brook, Legal Director for the ACLU-NC Legal Foundation. “Support for the freedom to marry continues to grow across North Carolina and the nation, and we will continue working to make sure that all North Carolina couples are afforded the dignity and protection that comes only with marriage.”
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia recognize the freedom to marry for same-sex couples. In recent months, federal courts in Oklahoma and Utah have also found those states bans on marriage for same-sex couples to be unconstitutional.
The Virginia ruling came in a case filed in Norfolk where attorneys Ted Olson and David Boies were counsel. The American Civil Liberties Union, the ACLU of Virginia, Lambda Legal, and the law firm Jenner and Block filed a separate case on behalf of two couples in Harrisonburg, Virginia, that was certified as a class action representing all same-sex couples in the state. That second case is still pending.
In her opinion, Judge Arenda L. Wright Allen wrote: "Gay and lesbian individuals share the same capacity as heterosexual individuals to form, preserve and celebrate loving, intimate and lasting relationships. Such relationships are created through the exercise of sacred, personal choices—choices, like the choices made by every other citizen, that must be free from unwarranted government interference."