On Friday, January 16th the Supreme Court agreed to hear four cases – drawn from the states of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee – challenging those states’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and/or to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in other states. The Supreme Court Litigation Clinic is co-counsel for petitioners in the Kentucky matter, Bourke v. Beshear, 14-574, and assisted in crafting and filing the petitioners’ reply brief on December 22, 2014.  The Court is expected to hear argument in April 2015, and to decide the case by the end of June.

The Justices will be limiting the scope of argument to two questions:

(1) Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex? and

(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?

Going forward, clinic faculty and students will be working with a team of attorneys on the merits phase of this case as it proceeds to argument. For further reading, see SCOTUSBlog. ◊