SALT LAKE CITY – The U.S. District Court for Utah has denied the state’s emergency request for stay of the court’s ruling issued earlier Friday declaring Utah’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional.

The Utah attorney general’s office released the following statement, in an email received by St. George News at 9:47 p.m. Friday:

The Utah Attorney General’s Office and the plaintiffs in the Amendment 3 lawsuit discussed with U.S. District Court Judge Robert Shelby this afternoon a stay of his decision prohibiting Utah’s definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. Judge Shelby declined to stay his decision on the court’s own accord and would not entertain an oral motion to stay. As a result, the Attorney General’s Office is filing a written motion to stay, which the judge has said he will resolve on an expedited basis.

In a 53-page ruling, Shelby struck down Utah’s Amendment 3 as unconstitutional, stating it “denies the plaintiffs their rights of due process and equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

The attorney general’s office said that it would seek the emergency stay on the ruling, arguing that same-sex marriage as a fundamental right has never been established in any previous case in the 10th Circuit.

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