Ruling may be just the beginning in Ohio

Associated Press

CINCINNATI

A federal judge’s ruling ordering Ohio authorities to recognize gay marriages on death certificates has added momentum to hopes of overturning the state’s ban on same-sex marriage and already is raising the divisive issue’s profile ahead of the 2014 state elections.

It didn’t take long for political types to weigh in on Judge Timothy Black’s Monday ruling, which said Ohio’s gay marriage ban is unconstitutional and designed primarily “to disparage and demean the dignity of same-sex couples in the eyes of the state and the wider community.”

Black stopped short of striking down the ban altogether, a move the judiciary has made in other states, but predicted that his ruling would spark further litigation aimed at striking down the state’s ban on gay marriage.

“In the real world out there, the stakes are larger,” he said last week during oral arguments in his Cincinnati courtroom.

Although Black’s ruling applies only to recognizing gay marriage on Ohio death certificates, he wrote in broad and unequivocal terms that “once you get married lawfully in one state, another state cannot summarily take your marriage away.”

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said the state will appeal Black’s ruling to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, saying the state’s “job is to defend the Ohio Constitution and state statutes.”

Harvard Law School professor Mark Tushnet said “the metaphor of dominoes falling is occurring,” referring to a spate of recent rulings in Utah, New Mexico and New Jersey that allowed same-sex marriages, bringing to 18 the number of states allowing gay marriage; Washington, D.C. also allows them.

“The more judges who do this, who express their views that gay marriage is constitutionally required, it’ll be easier for other judges to follow in the same line,” Tushnet said. “The judge doesn’t see himself or herself as strange or pushing the limits of the law. Rather, it’s what everyone else is doing.”

Tushnet said there’s a fairly strong belief in the constitutional law community that “at some point in the relatively near future, there’ll be a constitutional right to gay marriage, pretty much everywhere in the country.”