No action on same-sex marriage

[LeftofObama]

http://www.scotusblog.com/

The Supreme Court, after taking most of the day to prepare new orders, took no action Friday on the ten same-sex marriage pleas now on the docket. It did agree to rule on whether taking a human gene out of the body for research is a process that can be patented. That case is Association for Molecular Pathology v.Myriad Genetics (docket 12-398), with the grant limited to that issue. The Justices also agreed to rule on legal protection for makers of generic drugs (Mutual Phamaceutical v. Bartlett, 12-142).

The next opportunity for the Court to issue orders will be at 9:30 a.m. Monday. Nothing has ruled out the possibility that some actions on same-sex marriage could be announced at that time, although there is no indication that that will occur. It may be that the Court needs more time to decide what it wants to do next on any of the cases. If the Court has chosen to deny review of all of the cases, even that might not come out on Monday, since the chances are that there would be dissents from some of the denials, and it would take some time to prepare dissenting opinions. But denial of all of the cases is an extremely remote possibility anyway.

If no orders on any of these cases emerge on Monday, the next indication of what the Court may be doing with the issue could come with re-setting them for the private Conference that will be held next Friday. It is not uncommon, in cases that have some complexity, for the Court to require more than one Conference sitting to decide how to proceed. Ordinarily, the Court re-schedules cases after releasing orders and opinions from a Conference. Thus, that could happen on Monday or Tuesday of next week — orders are due Monday, one or more opinions Tuesday, but only in cases already heard.

I was really hoping we would hear something today.

[elleng]

1. 10 cases, so not really a surprise that Supremes have hard time

agreeing WHAT to decide, and when.

[xfundy]

2. There's always Monday!

Or Tuesday, ad infinitum.

Equality is coming. The arguments against it are absurd, based in "religious freedom" for fundies, etc., and are, again, absurd.

I'm amazed we've made this much progress in my lifetime. Chin up!

[LeftofObama]

3. I was just hoping to hear something today.

You're absolutely right. Equality is coming. I made a prediction a few months ago that we would see marriage equality in all 50 states in 2013, and it would take a SCOTUS ruling to make it happen. I guess I'm just getting antsy.

[Fearless]

4. Time is on our side

The longer it takes the more likely it will do so in our favor. Case precedent builds almost daily in support of marriage equality and equal rights for LGBT people.