This article is from the archive of our partner .

Update Thursday, July 11: As previously reported, Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane declined to defend her state's gay marriage ban in the face of a lawsuit challenging it. “I cannot ethically defend the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s version of [the Defense of Marriage Act] as I believe it to be wholly unconstitutional,” Kane said on Thursday afternoon. It's now up to the governor's law team to defend the ban.

Original post: Facing a lawsuit from the ACLU, it looks like Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane is going to refuse to defend the state government's ban on gay marriage. Pennsylvania, the only state in the northeast without provisions for same-sex civil unions or marriages, was one of the first states with gay marriage bans targeted by a suit in the wake of the Supreme Court's partial striking of the Defense of Marriage Act.

If it's true, the news, reported by the Philadelphia Daily News, based on multiple anonymous sources, isn't entirely surprising. Earlier today, the AP noted that Kane, a Democrat, supports gay marriage, and that Pennsylvania law includes a provision allowing the governor's legal team to defend state law in her place, should it be more "efficient," or in the state's interest to play it that way. Pennsylvania governor Tom Corbett opposes gay marriage, so it's unlikely that he'd decline to defend the law as well. The complaint, filed late Tuesday, names both Corbett and Kane as defendants. Kane is scheduled to speak to reporters on Thursday afternoon, when, apparently, she'll announce her decision regarding the suit.