There’s a fair chance that US marriage equality is just around the corner.
Vox reports:
At this point, it’s looking more and more likely that the battle for marriage equality will once again reach the Supreme Court. By Paul Smith’s estimate, it’s going to take at most two years for the nation’s top court to retry the same-sex marriage issue — and this time, they’re expected to settle the issue once and for all.
Smith is arguably the leading LGBT rights litigator in the country. He led the Supreme Court case that struck down state-level bans on gay sex and is part of the law firm, Jenner and Block, that successfully contested the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which banned same-sex marriages at the federal level.
After it was decided in June 2013, the DOMA case led to an avalanche of lower court rulings in favor of marriage equality. In just May, lower courts have supported same-sex marriages in four states. In the past week, Oregon and Pennsylvania had their bans struck down altogether. The two weeks before, courts rejected bans in Arkansas and Idaho, but eventually put the rulings on hold as they work through the appeals process.
Are we really so close? And which way will Kennedy swing?
