Judge dismisses challenge to N. Carolina gay-marriage law

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a challenge to a North Carolina law that says magistrates with religious objections can refuse to marry same-sex couples.

The judge ruled the three couples who brought the case – two gay and one interracial – lacked legal standing to sue and lacked evidence showing they were harmed directly by the law that took effect in June 2015.

North Carolina and Utah are the only states currently enforcing such religious-recusal laws. About 5 percent of North Carolina's magistrates have filed recusal notices, which prevent them from presiding at all marriages for at least six months. The law also allows some court clerks to decline to issue marriage licenses because of "any sincerely held religious objection."

The plaintiffs argued they could sue because some taxpayer money was being used for travel expenses for other magistrates to come to McDowell County, where all the magistrates had recused themselves. But U.S. District Judge Max Cogburn wrote they didn't point to any specific funds appropriated by the legislature to implement the law's alleged unconstitutional purpose.

The couples who sued also "lack standing by virtue of the fact that their claims are merely generalized grievances with a state law with which they disagree," Judge Cogburn said in the decision released late Tuesday.