A week after assuming jurisdiction over a lawsuit seeking to force state officials to recognize Arkansas marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen on Friday rejected a challenge to the suit by state lawyers seeking to have it dismissed.
Document set
Gay marriage in Arkansas
- Marriage-license lawsuit order
- Opinion/concurrence on justices in gay-marriage case
- Maples motion to dismiss new case
- Leslie Rutledge brief on behalf of state
- Wagoner amended motion
- Chief Justice Jim Hannah recusal letter
- Justice Rhonda Wood recusal letter
- Justice Paul Danielson recusal
- Plaintiffs' response to request for second oral arguments
- Plaintiffs' motion for lifting of stay
- Legislative roll call — Motion to suspend rules
- Interim resolution in support of Amendment 83
- Arkansas Supreme Court stays judge's gay-marriage ruling pending appeal
- Plaintiffs respond to state's request for stay
- McDaniel again asks Supreme Court for stay of gay-marriage ruling
- Judge Piazza May 15 final order on gay marriage bans
- Order denying defendants' motion for immediate stay
- Gay-marriage case plaintiffs' motion for clarification of judgment
- Piazza final order on gay marriage nunc pro tunc
- Piazza notice to attorneys of clarified order
- Court declines stay of gay-marriage ruling
- Piazza strikes down Arkansas' same-sex marriage ban
State lawyers contended the licenses, granted in three counties during a six-day period last year, were illegally issued, making them null and void. They asked Griffen to throw out the lawsuit, arguing that the court does not have the authority to give the plaintiffs, two couples and a widower, what they were seeking.
But in his seven-page ruling, the judge rejected those accusations and upheld the suit, which targets the state Department of Finance and Administration and the federal Social Security Administration.
The plaintiffs complain the finance agency is forcing gay married couples to file individual tax returns, denying them the benefits of joint filing and preventing spouses from enrolling in their spouse's health insurance.
Social Security has refused to let one plaintiff take the name of his spouse and denied death and survivor benefits, according to the lawsuit. Those denials violate the plaintiffs' rights guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions, the lawsuit states.
The judge did dismiss three other defendants from the lawsuit -- Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Attorney General Leslie Rutledge and Dr. Nathaniel Smith, director of the state Health Department -- on the grounds that the lawsuit does not make any accusations against them.
"The amended complaint fails to allege what, if anything, any of these defendants did or failed to do that constitutes any harm, wrong or breach of duty toward any of the plaintiffs," Griffen wrote.
The three are only being sued because of the office each holds, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1908 that political officeholders can't be sued just to test the constitutionality of the law in cases which they have no enforcement authority over the challenged law, according to the ruling, which allows the three to be added back onto the lawsuit as defendants if the plaintiffs can find sufficient grounds to sue them.
The defendants now have five days to respond to the lawsuit, and Griffen has ordered the lawyers -- plaintiffs' attorney Cheryl Maples and Assistant Attorney General Colin Jorgensen on behalf of the state defendants -- to schedule a hearing on the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction.
Clerks in Carroll, Pulaski and Washington counties issued marriage licenses to same-sex couples for six days in May 2014 after Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza, deciding an earlier lawsuit, struck down Arkansas' bans on gay marriage as unconstitutional.
The state Supreme Court stayed his ruling on appeal, and the high-court justices have not said when they would rule on the validity of Piazza's decision.
Metro on 05/30/2015