On April 7, U.S. District Judge Gustavo A. Gelpi issued an order declaring the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico’s statutory ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional in the case of Conde-Vidal v. Padilla. This was a bit of an anti-climax, since the state government had been complying with the Supreme Court’s marriage equality ruling since last summer while awaiting some action in the lawsuit pending in federal court, but the pathway to the April 7 Order was … <Read More>
marriage equality in Puerto Rico
Federal Judge in Puerto Rico Claims Obergefell v. Hodges Does Not Apply There
In an astonishing departure from established precedents, U.S. District Judge Juan M. Perez-Gimenez of the U.S. District Court in Puerto Rico, who had dismissed a marriage equality lawsuit on October 21, 2014, has issued a new decision on March 8, 2016, Vidal v. Garcia-Padilla, 2016 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 29651, asserting that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on June 26, 2015 in Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584, that the 14th Amendment of the … <Read More>