Which state has the best chance of making gay marriage the law of the land?
Slate
Gaming the Supreme Court
Which state has the best chance of making gay marriage the law of the land?
By Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern
On Monday, Sept. 29, the Supreme Court will consider seven cases challenging state-level gay marriage bans: three from Virginia, and one each from Oklahoma, Utah, Indiana, and Wisconsin. The court could decide to hear every case, or none at all—or it could pick a single one to review. Each case would come with its own procedural hitches and substantive flaws; if the court picks the wrong case, it may wind up waiting another year before settling the marriage question once and for all. Below, we’ve outlined all the perks and flaws of the current batch of cases. These contenders are competing to make civil-rights immortality.
Virginia
Glamour
Ted Olson and David Boies, two attorneys representing the Virginia plaintiffs, argued in Hollingsworth v. Perry that California’s gay marriage ban—and every gay marriage ban in the country—was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court held that backers of California’s ban didn’t have standing in court, thereby restoring gay marriage to California. So Olson and Boies kind of won. They both argued Bush v. Gore—Olson for Bush, Boies for Gore. One won. All in all, that’s not a bad record.
Another attorney representing another group of plaintiffs is Paul Smith, who argued Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, which decriminalized sodomy. He won. He also clerked for Lewis Powell, the swing vote on an earlier case that had upheld sodomy bans as constitutional. So, symmetry. As Smith notes in his brief, “the collective experience of counsel” means these groups “have litigated every major gay rights case decided by this court” from 1996 on....
MORE at http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/jurisprudence/2014/09/gay_marriage_at_the_supreme_court_comparing_utah_virginia_indiana_wisconsin.html
