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Federal Court Says Utah Must Recognize Same-Sex Marriages That Were Celebrated Before the Supreme Court Stay

Posted on: May 19th, 2014 by Art Leonard No Comments

U.S. District Judge Dale A. Kimball ruled on May 19 that the state of Utah must recognize the same-sex marriages that were performed in the state from December 20 to January 6. Another federal district judge, Robert Shelby, ruled on December 20 in Kitchen v. Herbert that Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional. Judge Shelby, and subsequently the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, refused to stay that decision pending appeal and more than 1300 marriage licenses were issued to same-sex couples before the U.S. Supreme Court responded affirmatively to the state’s request for a stay pending appeal. After the Supreme Court issued its stay, Governor Gary Herbert declared that the same-sex marriages that had been performed were “on hold” as the stay had “revived” the state’s marriage ban. In this ruling in Evans v. State of Utah, Judge Kimball found that the state is barred by the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment from putting legally valid marriages “on hold,” but temporarily stayed his own ruling for 21 days to give the state an opportunity to appeal to the 10th Circuit.

There was some confusion on the part of the state government after Judge Shelby issued his injunction against the state’s marriage ban. Some clerks began issuing licenses quickly, while others hesitated, awaiting instructions from the state government. Finally, upon the attorney general’s advice that clerks who refused to issue licenses could be held in contempt by the federal district court, many clerks fell into line and issued more than 1300 licenses, as state officials announced that such marriages were valid. However, when the Supreme Court issued its stay and the governor declared that those marriages were now “on hold” because the state could not recognize them under the “revived” laws, the ACLU filed suit on behalf of several recently-married couples, seeking an injunction requiring the court to recognize the marriages.

The result was to interfere with the ongoing efforts by recently-married same-sex couples to assert their rights, including several adoption proceedings that were thrown into limbo as Utah trial judges were uncertain how to proceed. Indeed, the state is facing the threat of a contempt proceeding from one trial judge who issued an adoption order that state officials are refusing to honor by issuing an appropriate birth certificate, and there are already questions pending at the Utah Supreme Court about the status of these marriages. The court has temporarily stayed various adoption proceedings while it decides whether the state must recognize the marriages. It will be interesting to see what weight it accords to the federal district court’s ruling on vested rights, which depends on that court’s reading of Utah precedents.

The ACLU filed its lawsuit in state court, but the state removed the suit to federal district court, and opposed the plaintiffs’ motion to certify to the Utah Supreme Court the question whether couples legally married under Utah law have vested rights in their marriage that could not be taken away by the state without a compelling interest. The plaintiffs moved for a preliminary injunction, arguing that as a matter of law their vested rights were being abridged by the state for no valid reason. The state, in response, argued that the Supreme Court’s stay had a retroactive effect, restoring the marriage ban going back to December 20, 2013, thus rendering the marriages invalid. And, after having opposed the plaintiff’s motion to certify the question to the Utah Supreme Court, the state reversed course and urged Judge Kimball to certify virtually the same question, but Judge Kimball refused to do so, finding that Utah precedents are clear on the question of vested marriage rights.

Judge Kimball found that the state’s arguments were contradicted by well-established principles of Utah law as well as the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment. Judge Kimball placed heavily reliance on the California Supreme Court’s ruling in the somewhat analogous situation created when California voters adopted Proposition 8 in November 2008 after thousands of same-sex couples had married in the five months after that court’s marriage equality decision went into effect in June 2008. In that case, Strauss v. Horton, the California Supreme Court said that those who had married at a time when same-sex marriage was legal had vested rights in their marital status and everything that went with that status, which could not be taken away by a subsequent constitutional amendment. Kimball found that Utah cases dating back to the 19th century had also taken the position that once a couple was legally married, they had vested marriage rights protected against retroactive rejection by the state.

Utah’s attorneys argued that the California situation with Proposition 8 was distinguishable. The Utah licenses were issued in compliance with an injunction by a single federal trial judge that the state had promptly appealed. Thus, they said, it was not in that sense a final order in the case, unlike the California Supreme Court’s ruling on marriage equality, which could only be overturned by a state constitutional amendment. (That amendment was subsequently ruled unconstitutional by a federal district court in the famous Perry v. Schwarzenegger case, which went into effect last June after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the proponents of Proposition 8 did not have standing to appeal the court’s ruling, which had not been appealed by state officials.) Judge Kimball was not persuaded by this distinction, and he also pointed out the strong bias against retroactive application of new legal rulings. The Supreme Court did not issue any explanation about the impact of the stay it issued on January 6, and Judge Kimball pointed out that such an action would not be deemed to have any sort of retroactive effect unless the Supreme Court had voiced such an intention.

He also found that there were strong Utah judicial precedents concerning vested rights in marriage, holding that such rights vest when the marriage was performed. According to Judge Kimball, from the time Judge Shelby issued his injunction until the time the Supreme Court stayed the injunction pending appeal, it was legal for same-sex couples to marry in Utah, and as soon as any such marriage was performed, the couple had vested rights in the marriage that could not be abridged by the state. He pointed out that this was consistent with the Supreme Court’s DOMA ruling, U.S. v. Windsor. “The Windsor Court held that divesting ‘married same-sex couples of the duties and responsibilities that are an essential part of married life’ violates due process,” he wrote.

Judge Kimball went through the wording of the Utah constitutional and statutory same-sex marriage bans, and found that all of those provisions were stated in the present tense and made no mention of retroactive application. Thus, if one construed the Supreme Court stay to have “revived” those provisions while the case was on appeal, there was no basis to apply them retroactively.

“The State argues that application of Utah’s previously existing marriage bans after the Supreme Court’s Stay Order is not retroactive application of the bans because the laws were enacted long before the Plaintiffs entered into their marriages,” he wrote. “However, this argument completely ignores the change in the law that occurred. The marriage bans became legal nullities when the Kitchen decision was issued and were not reinstated until the Stay Order. In addition, the State’s argument fails to recognize that Utah law defines a retroactive application of a law as an application that ‘takes away or impairs vested rights acquired under existing laws in respect to transactions or considerations already past.’ Under this definition, the State’s application of the marriage bans to place Plaintiffs’ marriages ‘on hold,’ necessarily ‘takes away or impairs vested rights acquired under existing law.” Judge Kimball concluded that even if Judge Shelby’s decision is eventually reversed and the injunction dissolved, the marriages that were performed would remain valid under the vested rights theory and the strong policy against retroactive application of law.

After analyzing the factors applied in the 10th Circuit to determine whether a preliminary injunction should be issued, Judge Kimball found that all the factors had been satisfied. “Plaintiffs have demonstrated a clear and unequivocal likelihood of success on the merits of their deprivation of federal due process claim,” he wrote, and he found that they had also established the necessary irreparable harm if their marriages were not recognized. On the other hand, he found, “The State has no legitimate interest in depriving Plaintiffs of their constitutional rights,” and he also found “no harm to the State based on an inability to apply the marriage bans retroactively.” As to the public interest, “the court agrees with Plaintiffs that the public is well served by having certainty about the status of Plaintiffs’ marriages.”

The state’s lawyers had asked the court to stay its preliminary injunction so that the state could appeal it to the 10th Circuit. Judge Kimball concluded that “the State has not met its burden of establishing the factors required for a stay pending appeal,” but decided to exercise discretion to grant to the state a “limited 21-day stay during which it may pursue an emergency Motion to Stay with the Tenth Circuit.” His explanation: “The court recognizes the irreparable harms facing Plaintiffs every day. However, the court finds some benefit in allowing the Tenth Circuit to review whether to stay the injunction prior to implementation of the injunction. Therefore, notwithstanding the many factors weighing against a stay, the court, in its discretion, grants the State a temporary 21-day stay.” However, unless the 10th Circuit responds favorably to the state’s request, Judge Kimball’s order will go into effect requiring recognition of the marriages.

The plaintiffs were represented at the court’s hearing on the preliminary injunction motion by attorneys Erik Strindberg, Joshua A. Block and John Mejia.

Judge Kimball was appointed to the federal district court by President Bill Clinton in 1997 and took senior status and a reduced caseload in November 2009 upon reaching age 70. He teaches at Brigham Young University Law School, and is an active member of the Mormon Church, in which he has held various leadership positions.

Marriage Equality Case Developments Come Hot and Heavy

Posted on: April 8th, 2014 by Art Leonard No Comments

As anticipation builds for the first federal appellate arguments on marriage equality since the Supreme Court’s decision last June striking down the Defense of Marriage Act’s anti-gay federal marriage definition, new developments in marriage equality litigation continue to pile up in various parts of the country.

On Thursday, April 10, a panel of three judges of the Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit will hear the state of Utah’s appeal of last December’s federal district court order, Kitchen v. Herbert, 961 F.Supp.2d 1181 (D. Utah 2013), requiring that the state allow same-sex couples to marry and recognize same-sex marriages contracted out of state. That order was stayed by the Supreme Court on January 6 after a panel of the 10th Circuit had refused to stay it, and only after more than a thousand same-sex couples had married. A week later, on April 17, the same three-judge panel will hear the state of Oklahoma’s appeal from a narrower order by the federal court there, Bishop v. United States, 962 F.Supp.2d 1252 (N.D. Okla. 2014), requiring the state to allow same-sex couples to marry but avoiding the issue of recognition of out-of-state marriages. Then, on May 13, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Richmond, Virginia, will hear oral arguments in an appeal by two county court clerks of another federal district court ruling, Bostic v. Rainey, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19110 (E.D. Va., Feb. 13, 2014), requiring the state to allow same-sex couples to marry and to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages. Arguments have yet to be scheduled for similar appeals in the 5th, 6th and 9th Circuits, but there have been developments in some of those cases as well.

First, turning to Virginia, where marriage equality lawsuits were filed in both the Eastern and Western federal district courts. . . The Western District case, Harris v. Rainey, the second to be filed, was brought as a classic test-case by the ACLU and Lambda Legal, which put out a call after the Windsor decision to identify suitable plaintiffs to challenge the Virginia ban. While these public interest law firms were carefully assembling their case, a same-sex couple living in the Eastern District found an attorney and went ahead with their own lawsuit.

News reports brought that case to the attention of the American Foundation for Equal Rights (AFER), which had been formed in 2009 to challenge the constitutionality of California Proposition 8, having recruited star appellate attorneys Ted Olson (former U.S. Solicitor General) and David Boies to litigate that case to the Supreme Court. Olson and Boies won Perry V. Schwarzenegger in the district court, but fell short of achieving a Supreme Court nation-wide victory because the state decided not to appeal and the Supreme Court held, in Hollingsworth v. Perry, 131 S. Ct. 2652 (2013), that the proponents of Proposition 8, who had tried to appeal, lacked the qualifications to represent the state’s interest in the case. The district court decision stood, and same-sex marriages resumed in California.

Then AFER was looking about for a new opportunity to get this issue to the Supreme Court and suddenly Virginia presented itself as a lively possibility. AFER contacted Bostic’s attorney and offered its services, which were readily accepted. The Olson-Boies team pushed the case forward faster than the ACLU/Lambda team, which filed their case shortly after the Bostic case was filed. The Bostic case moved forward much more quickly, and the federal district court granted summary judgment to the plaintiffs on February 13 in Bostic v. Rainey, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 19110 (E.D. Va.), after the newly-elected governor and attorney general of Virginia announced that they agreed with plaintiffs that the state’s marriage amendment and statutory ban were unconstitutional. As these officials (and subsequently the state’s registrar of vital records) were no longer defending the ban, the case was being pushed forward on appeal by two county court clerks.

Meanwhile, the Harris case was still at the pre-trial stage, with the trial judge having certified it as a class action on behalf of all same-sex couples interested in marrying or having their marriages recognized in Virginia, except for the plaintiff couple in Bostic v. Schaefer (as the case was now called). This prompted ACLU/Lambda to petition the 4th Circuit to be allowed to participate in the appeal on behalf of their plaintiff class, and the 4th Circuit granted the motion on March 10. This left the judge in Harris v. Rainey, Michael F. Urbanski, in a rather odd position. He was facing a summary judgment motion from the plaintiffs, but nobody was actually opposing the motion, since all defendants in the case had dropped any support for the marriage ban. (The local clerk in this case, Thomas E. Roberts of the Staunton Circuit Court, officially takes no position on the constitutionality of the ban.) And, of course, whatever the 4th Circuit decides will be binding on Judge Urbanski, so it made little sense for him to issue a decision on the pending motion before that happened. He took the prudent step of issuing an opinion on March 31, see 2014 Westlaw 1292803, announcing that he would “stay this case” pending the 4th Circuit’s decision. Of course, if the 4th Circuit rules against marriage equality in Bostic, the plaintiffs will either apply for en banc rehearing or petition the Supreme Court for certiorari. But they may not be the first to get there, depending what happens in the 10th Circuit.

There has also been an interesting development in the 6th Circuit, which now has the distinction of being the only circuit to have marriage equality appeals pending from every state in the circuit: Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette filed a petition with the court on April 4, asking that Michigan’s appeal of a federal court order in DeBoer v. Snyder, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 37274 (E.D. Mich., March 21, 2014), requiring the state to allow and recognize same-sex marriages, by-pass the usual three-judge panel stage and go directly to en banc review, which in the 6th Circuit would mean review before the full bench of 15 active judges.

The 6th Circuit had already issued an expedited briefing schedule after issuing a stay of the district court’s ruling, mirroring the schedules issued in the Kentucky and Tennessee cases, and following shortly on the schedule for the earlier-filed Ohio death certificate case. Commented Schuette, “Accordingly, all four cases are proceeding swiftly in parallel and will have briefing completed within weeks of each other.” Referencing Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure 35, which recognizes that some cases are “so significant that they warrant initial hearing en banc,” Schuette asserted, “This is such a case. It presents the question whether one of our most fundamental rights — the right to vote — matters, or whether a judge can take an important social issue out of the hands of the voters by concluding it is not something about which reasonable citizens can disagree.” This is a very loaded way of stating the question. For one thing, the Supreme Court has not recognized voting as a fundamental right; if it had, recent decisions upholding voter ID laws would certainly have come out differently. For another, it mischaracterizes the “rational basis test” as applied by the district court in this and other cases.

At any event, Schuette is undoubtedly correct that an early resolution of this case would be helpful. No matter how it turns out, it is likely headed to the Supreme Court. On the other hand, Schuette may be playing a numbers game here. The 6th Circuit now has 10 active judges appointed by either George H.W. or George W. Bush, three judges appointed by Clinton and two by Obama, with one vacancy. The en banc court has a 10-5 Republican-appointed majority. A three-judge panel, on the other hand, depending on the luck of the draw (and assuming random panel compositions) might even have a majority of Democratic appointees. On the other hand, several of the marriage equality decisions rendered since Windsor have been issued by Republican appointees, so it looks like pre-judicial political affiliations of the judges are not playing a big role in these post-Windsor cases. Be that as it may, this issue is not going to be finally decided in any federal court of appeals; only a Supreme Court resolution will be accepted by any of the states that are actively defending their bans in court. (The one major looming exception is Oregon, where state officials have informed the federal district judge in a pending marriage equality case that if he rules in favor of plaintiffs after a summary judgment hearing scheduled soon, the state will comply and not appeal, and no objecting county clerks have moved to intervene as defendants to take the case on appeal.) So, stay tuned for possible interesting developments in the 6th Circuit. What might be most efficient, of course, would be for the court to consolidate the pending appeals from the four states into one grand proceeding, hear it en banc, and issue an opinion dealing with all the cases simultaneously. That would be something special, no matter how it turned out!

There are also interesting developments in the 9th Circuit, where an appeal is pending by Lambda Legal of an adverse decision from the federal district court in Nevada that predates Windsor, Sevcik v. Sandoval, 911 F. Supp. 2d 996 (D. Nev. 2012). The state was actively defending this case on appeal, but abruptly altered its position after a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit ruled on January 21 in SmithKline Beecham v. Abbott Laboratories, 2014 U.S. App. LEXIS 1128, that sexual orientation discrimination claims are subject to “heightened scrutiny” under the 14th Amendment. That case is an antitrust lawsuit between competing pharmaceutical companies about HIV-related drugs, and Abbott, the defendant, used a peremptory challenge to keep a gay man off the jury. The 9th Circuit panel held that a peremptory challenge could not be used for that purpose; after Windsor, held the panel, prior 9th Circuit cases on point were no longer valid and the heightened scrutiny standard meant that in order to remove a juror because he was gay, the defendant would have to show that there was cause to question the particular juror’s ability to decide the case fairly. When Abbott announced it was not seeking en banc review or planning to appeal this to the Supreme Court, Nevada’s governor and attorney general announced their conclusion that the Nevada ban was not defensible in the 9th Circuit. They didn’t withdraw their appeal, however, as amicus parties would step up to argue in support of the ban and, presumably, if the case got to the Supreme Court, state officials might again take up the argument.

The 9th Circuit had scheduled oral argument to take place on April 9, a day before the 10th Circuit Utah argument, but then, mysteriously, cancelled that hearing date without announcing a new one. Word was that a judge of the circuit asked for more time to prepare for the hearing. But it eventually appeared that there was some sentiment within the Circuit to reconsider the panel decision in SmithKline before proceeding with the Nevada marriage case, as the court issued a notice to the parties informing them that a judge of the circuit had asked to consider going en banc, and the parties were directed to submit briefs on the question whether the case should be reconsidered en banc. This effectively puts off the Nevada case for a while, since it is unlikely the Circuit would scheduled a new hearing until it has decided whether to reconsider SmithKline, and how such reconsideration turns out would affect whether Nevada officials reconsider their decision not to defend their ban before the 9th Circuit. Complicated, what? In addition, of course, what happens in this case affects the marriage equality lawsuits pending in several other states in the 9th Circuit: Arizona, Idaho, and Oregon. So here is some real legal suspense playing itself out.

Finally, turning back again to the 6th Circuit, and specifically to Ohio, there was a new development on April 4 when District Judge Timothy Black, in Cincinnati, held a hearing on a more recently filed marriage equality case, Henry v. Wymsylo, brought by some married lesbian couples seeking an order that Ohio recognize their marriages. Plaintiffs had filed a motion for permanent injunction and declaratory relief. Judge Black, who had previously issued a ruling that the state must recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages for purposes of recording death certificates in Obergefell v.Wymyslo, 962 F. Supp. 2d 968 (S.D. Ohio 2013), announced at this hearing that he “anticipates striking down as unconstitutional under all circumstances Ohio’s bans on recognizing legal same-sex marriages from other states,” and would issue an opinion to that effect “on or before April 14, 2014.” This order would go beyond the Obergefell case, since it would extend beyond recognition for a specific purpose (death certificates, birth certificates) to a more general recognition requirement, similar to those issued by other trial judges in the 6th Circuit in Kentucky, Bourke v. Beshear, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 17457 (W.D. Ky., Feb. 12, 2014), and Tennessee, Tanco v. Haslam, 2014 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 33463 (M.D. Tenn., March 14, 2014). Presumably, the state would quickly file its appeal and this could be consolidated with the pending appeal of the Obergefell decision and perhaps, as noted above, consolidated by the 6th Circuit with its hearings in the Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky cases. It would certainly make sense to do so, as the legal issues are identical in all these cases.

So, things are quickly coming to a boil at the appellate level, even as new marriage equality cases have been filed in recent weeks in other states, and the count of marriage equality cases on file nationwide is rapidly approaching litigation in every state that does not already allow same-sex couples to marry. As of now, same-sex couples can marry in 17 states and the District of Columbia, and a majority of those states, as well as D.C., achieved marriage equality through the legislature, not through judicial action. In addition, of course, as a result of the Windsor decision, the federal government now recognizes same-sex marriages validly concluded under state law for most purposes, providing at least partial recognition for same-sex couples who marry in states other than where they reside. The tide toward marriage equality appears irresistible, as public opinion polls show majority support in the electorate (and even, when things are broken down demographically, by residents of many non-marriage-equality states and by young Republicans). This will likely end up in the Supreme Court next term, so spring 2015 may be when the marriage equality issue is resolved in the United States.