This week, a federal judge in Kentucky ruled that the state must honor same-sex marriages legally performed in other states, but the ruling did not address Kentucky’s own ban on such marriages.

If the Court of Appeals upholds Thursday’s decision, the repercussions in the South could be wide. Similar amendments limiting marriage to a man and a woman would most likely be voided in other states of the Fourth Circuit, including North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia. (Maryland, the fifth member, approved same-sex marriage in 2012.)

But many legal experts believe that this case, or another among the dozens now being argued in federal district or appeals courts around the country, will eventually be taken up by the United States Supreme Court.

Last year, as it overturned a part of the Defense of Marriage Act, the Supreme Court required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages from states where it is legal, and a majority of justices agreed that discrimination against gay and lesbian couples was unjustified and stigmatized their children. In another decision, it allowed a reversal of California’s ban on same-sex marriage to stand on technical grounds.

But so far, the justices have not decided the basic issue raised by the new decision in Virginia and similar recent decisions by federal district courts in Utah and Oklahoma: whether any sound constitutional reason exists for a state to deny gay and lesbian couples an equal right to marry.