North Dakota has become the last state in the union to have its ban on gay marriage challenged in the federal courts.



Seven couples filed a lawsuit on Friday in the US district court in Fargo, calling for an end to North Dakota’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage and its refusal to accept gay marriages from out of state. The legal move completes a sweep of all 31 states that still have laws in place restricting marriage to a union of one man and one woman.

Nineteen states and the District of Columbia now have marriage equality, including Oregon and Pennsylvania which both agreed to drop their prohibitions in the wake of federal court rulings. A further 11 states have also had their bans thrown out by federal judges, but in those cases appeals are pending.

The lodging of the final lawsuit in North Dakota underlines the judicial wind of change that has swept America since the US supreme court introduced federal recognition of gay marriage in a landmark ruling last June. The nation’s highest panel of judges struck down key parts of the federal ban, the Defense of Marriage Act, or Doma.

“Since the supreme court’s historic decision, there hasn’t been a single state same-sex marriage ban that has survived a court challenge. It really is only a matter of time before marriage equality is the law of the land nationwide,” said Charlie Joughin, spokesman of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBT group in the US.

The issue is not likely to be put fully to rest until the US supreme court agrees to tackle a question that it has so far avoided: whether prohibitions on gay marriage are unlawful under the constitutional right to equal protection under the law. Many observers think that here, too, it is only a matter of time before the nine justices are forced to confront the subject head on.

Already three states – Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia – have rulings pending from their federal appeals courts. If, as expected, the appeals circuits uphold the legality of same-sex marriage, then opponents of it would have only one final option left – to petition the supreme court.

The latest opinion poll from the Washington Post and ABC News confirmed that the American people are broadly in tune with this legal transformation. The poll showed that 56% of those surveyed supported the right of lesbians and gay men to marry, and in a separate question 50% thought it a constitutional right.