Despite polls that show broad public support for allowing same-sex couples to marry, New Jersey, to its great shame, has refused to follow the example set by other states in the Northeast — Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Rhode Island and Vermont — in granting marriage equality.

A civil rights suit to be heard on Thursday in a New Jersey state court could finally change that. Brought on behalf of six couples and Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s largest gay rights group, the case squarely addresses an urgent legal question for New Jersey that grows out of the United States Supreme Court’s ruling in June that ended the unjust denial of federal marriage benefits for married same-sex couples under the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

It has long been clear that civil unions under New Jersey law — a status that relegates same-sex couples to a category inferior to marriage — fails to meet the standard of equal rights for same-sex couples established by the New Jersey Supreme Court in a 2006 decision. Under the State Constitution, the court ruled, “committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples.”

Now that married same-sex couples are eligible for federal benefits, like joint tax filing and veteran’s survivor payments, New Jersey couples in civil unions who are denied those benefits face an even bigger equality gap: they are clearly not afforded the same rights. In July, the plaintiffs in this suit filed a motion for a summary judgment asking the state court to declare what the Supreme Court ruling made obvious: New Jersey civil unions are not equal to marriage and violate the State Constitution.