Two months after a state-court judge invalidated Arkansas' same-sex marriage ban, two same-sex couples asked a federal judge in Little Rock to issue a similar ruling in their pending federal lawsuit.
The couples -- Rita and Pam Jernigan, and Becca and Tara Austin -- filed their federal suit on July 15, 2013, shortly after a similar lawsuit was filed in Pulaski County Circuit Court challenging the constitutionality of Amendment 83 to the state constitution and state laws pertaining to marriage.
Amendment 83, which decrees that marriage is between a man and a woman, was passed in 2004 by 75 percent of Arkansas voters.
On May 9, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza declared the state bans unconstitutional, making same-sex marriages in Arkansas legal. That led to hundreds of same-sex marriages in the state until the Arkansas Supreme Court stayed the ruling a week later until it can hear an appeal.
Both lawsuits, and numerous others in state and federal courts across the country, were filed last summer shortly after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down parts of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, effectively extending federal recognition of marriage to legally wed same-sex couples.
In a motion for summary judgment filed Wednesday in the federal case, attorneys Angela Mann and Jack Wagoner III of Little Rock asked U.S. District Judge Kristine Baker to decide the case on legal issues alone, saying there is no need for a hearing.
The motion asserts that the Jernigans and the Austins "are entitled to summary judgment on their claim that Amendment 83 and Arkansas' related marriage laws deprive [them] of their fundamental right to marry in violation of the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution," adding, "There are no genuine disputes as to any material fact relating to this claim."
In November, an attorney for Pulaski County Circuit-County Clerk Larry Crane, the defendant, filed a motion asking Baker to let the state decide the case. Attorney David Fuqua cited a 1971 U.S. Supreme Court case, Younger v. Harris, which established that federal courts are generally prohibited from granting relief that interferes with pending state proceedings that implicate important state interests.
Fuqua noted that the circuit court case was pending before Piazza at the time and that a decision in the state case striking down barriers to same-sex marriage would "fully resolve the claims of the plaintiffs" in the federal case.
Piazza's ruling is among numerous federal and state cases cited in a 42-page brief attached to Wednesday's summary judgment motion in support of the request. The brief emphasizes the decision in United States v. Windsor, the 2013 U.S. Supreme Court case invalidating the federal Defense of Marriage Act. It notes that in Wright v. State, Piazza "followed suit and found that the Arkansas' constitutional and statutory provisions at issue here are unconstitutional under both the federal and the Arkansas constitutions."
The brief quotes from several other rulings and argues that the constitution's due-process clause "protects the fundamental right to marry and form intimate relationships, as well as the fundamental liberty interests in existing marriages." It also argues that Arkansas' same-sex marriage bans and laws refusing to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states "violate equal protection guarantees by treating same-sex couples differently than all other couples."
The brief notes that it wasn't until 1997 that the Arkansas Legislature "abruptly changed course" by amending state statutes "to specifically prohibit marriages of same-sex couples and deny legal recognition to valid marriages performed in other states." Before then, it says, Arkansas law simply recognized foreign marriages.
It notes that in the Windsor ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court "rejected the same rationales presented for Amendment 83 as merely a pretext to 'harm a politically unpopular group.'"
"Arkansas' marriage bans and anti-recognition laws do not continue any existing tradition in Arkansas other than discrimination against same-sex couples," the brief states.
In a lengthy discussion of how the Windsor case "changed the landscape for same-sex couples and provides an avenue by which courts may end discrimination and animus directed at same-sex couples," the Little Rock attorneys wrote, "Federal and state courts have held that discriminatory laws targeting same-sex couples cannot stand in light of Windsor."
Metro on 07/17/2014