Update: Supreme Court to review Michigan gay marriage case

HAZEL PARK, MI -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to review a Louisiana case on the constitutionality of the state's ban against same-sex marriage, and further delayed a decision on similar cases from Michigan and three other states.

The high court could issue a decision on taking up the issue Friday.

Court challenges of gay marriage bans in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, Kentucky and Louisiana were on a long list of cases up for discussion in Supreme Court conferences this week and last.

If the court agrees to review the gay marriage cases, the issue of same-sex marriage could be decided for the entire nation by July 2015.

The Supreme Court in October declined to review another set of gay marriage cases from five other states, but at the time, there was no conflict among federal appeals court rulings, which had all ruled in favor of same-sex couples.

Since then, the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld bans in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky, creating a conflict that makes a high court review far more likely, according to legal experts.

In Louisiana's case, the parties were looking to skip a decision from an appeals court and take a district court decision straight to the Supreme Court.

The court is expected to discuss the other cases Friday.

April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse of Hazel Park sued Michigan because they can't jointly adopt their three children with the ban in place, and a federal district judge in March ruled in their favor, briefly making same-sex marriage legal in Michigan before the appeals court stayed that decision the next day and reversed it Nov. 6, upholding the ban.

The couple then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case, topple the ban and decide the issue for the entire nation.

Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette agreed that the high court should review the case, but argued for upholding the appeals court finding that the decision should be left for voters, who approved the ban in 2004.

"Reasonable people of good will might think it is at least debatable that this definition advances the State's interest in encouraging parents to stick together to care for and raise their children," Schuette argued. "And if it is at least debatable, then federal courts have no authority to overturn the people's legislative choice."

DeBoer and Rowse in their petition for review argued that the appeals court decision conflicts with previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings.

"In Loving [v. Virginia, the 1967 Supreme Court case that overturned bans against interracial marriage], this Court decided the core constitutional issues at hand rather than wait for further studies about the claimed perils (especially to the country's children) of blending the races," their lawyers argued.

The state in its response cited another past Supreme Court decision, one that came just last year, out of a Michigan case.

"As members of this Court recently observed, '[d]emocracy does not presume that some subjects are either too divisive or too profound for public debate,'" Schuette wrote, citing the case that upheld Michigan's voter-approved ban against affirmative action.