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Lawyers representing five same-sex couples who are seeking marriage rights in Puerto Rico will challenge a federal judge’s decision earlier this week to dismiss their case.

Omar Gonzalez-Pagan of Lambda Legal told the Washington Blade on Thursday that an appeal of U.S. District Judge Juan Pérez-Giménez’s decision will be filed with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston “within a matter of days.”

Puerto Rico falls under the First Circuit’s jurisdiction.

“All families in Puerto Rico need the protections of marriage,” said Gonzalez-Pagan earlier this week.

Ada Conde Vidal and Ivonne Álvarez Vélez of San Juan, who legally married in Massachusetts in 2004, originally filed the lawsuit in March.

Four additional gay and lesbian couples along with Puerto Rico Para Tod@s, a Puerto Rican LGBT advocacy group, joined the case in June.

“The nefariousness and offensiveness of Judge Pérez-Giménez does not represent the sentiment of the people of Puerto Rico,” Pedro Julio Serrano of Puerto Rico Para Tod@s told the Washington Blade on Tuesday. “We are a sympathetic and inclusive people.”

Pedro Julio Serrano of Puerto Rico Para Tod@s, which is also a plaintiff in the case that Ada Conde Vidal and Ivonne Álvarez Vélez filed in March, described Pérez-Giménez’s ruling as “shameful.”

New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who is from Puerto Rico, is among those who also blasted the decision to dismiss the case.

“I very much regret the decision from a court that let pass an extraordinary opportunity for equality and justice,” said San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz on her Facebook page on Tuesday. “The truth is that love will triumph sooner than later.”

Puerto Rican lawmakers in 1999 amended the U.S. commonwealth’s civil code to ban the recognition of same-sex marriages — even those legally performed in other jurisdictions. Unions in which one person is transgender are also not recognized.

Pérez-Giménez is among the small handful of judges who have ruled against nuptials for gays and lesbians since the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2013 struck down a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Same-sex couples are now able to legally marry in 32 states and D.C.

Opponents of marriage rights for same-sex couples on the island applauded Pérez-Giménez’s decision.

“Puerto Rico, through its Legislature, is free to form its own marriage policy,” said Puerto Rico for the Family in a statement. “The citizenry and their elected representatives should debate the possibility of defining marriage. It should not be debated by judges.”

Gov. Alejandro García Padilla, who has signed a number of pro-LGBT bills into law since taking office in January 2013, supports civil unions for same-sex couples. He reiterated his opposition to marriage rights for gays and lesbians after Pérez-Giménez dismissed Conde and Álvarez’s case.

“I have been consistently for ensuring that people in same-sex relationships who live together have the same rights and have access to the same rights and responsibilities as those who are in opposite-sex relationships,” said the governor as El Nuevo Día, a Puerto Rican newspaper, reported. “But I have also said, since before I was elected, that I do not believe in same-sex marriage and that what we need to look for is to guarantee the same rights. And we have taken actions, that do not have precedent in any Legislature in the history of Puerto Rico, to guarantee the same rights to the LGBTT community.”