Will a Michigan case invalidate state gay marriage bans?

[MNBrewer]

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/news/case-invalidate-state-gay-marriage-bans-210113133.html

Just last week, a divided Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, ruling that excluding same-sex married couples from the federal definition of marriage unfairly discriminated against people in those unions. Now, a federal judge in Michigan has green-lighted a discrimination case brought by a same-sex couple that could be among the first to test how the DOMA decision will affect the dozens of state-level gay marriage bans around the country.

The case involves April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, two female nurses who live together with their adopted children in Hazel Park, Mich. The same-sex couple wants to jointly adopt their three children, but the Michigan Marriage Amendment, which defines marriage in the state as between only opposite-sex couples, prevents them from legally doing so. (Separately, the state allows only single people and married heterosexual couples to adopt.)

In a court filing on Monday, District Judge Bernard Friedman denied a motion from the Michigan government to dismiss the couple's case, ruling that the Supreme Court's DOMA decision, Windsor v. U.S., shed new light on the claim.

[Lex]

1. It will be curious to see what the state courts make of

this in Justice Kennedy's majority opinion:

“The avowed purpose and practical effect of the law here in question are to impose a disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma upon all who enter into same-sex marriages made lawful by the unquestioned authority of the states.” In doing so, he argued, the Congress had passed a law that “violates the due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government.”

My understanding has always been that if the US Constitution confers a right, a protection, then the state cannot abridge it. States can only expand rights, but the US Constitution lays down the minimum of rights/obligations.