BY AJ TRAGER
MICHIGAN – This year saw big advances in the DeBoer v Snyder case as it moved through the federal courts.
April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse began their legal fight for second parent adoption (and LGBT marriage equality) in January 2012. They filed a federal lawsuit against Oakland County requesting second parent adoption rights of their three (now four) children granted to them.
In 2013, Federal District Judge Bernard Friedman requested that the suit be amended to include same-sex marriage rights. Arguments were heard in October 2013 by Friedman, who decided the case was too large to proceed via summary judgement and requested that the issue be given a full trial, setting the date to Feb. 25, 2014.
"Jayne and I made this choice – the decision to fight the second parent adoption ban – and we are happy to be representing everybody in the marriage case as well. We love our children. This started out as about our children; this is still about our children. Although we'd reap the benefits of being able to get married in the state of Michigan, we want to be recognized like everybody else. Nothing says family like a marriage license; that says we are legally a family. And that's what we are hoping for and – I think – what we're going to get," DeBoer said on the first day of the trial.
Held at the Theodore Levin U.S. Court House, the trial ran for nine days. A large protest from 200 Baptist pastors was planned for March 2 but only a handful showed up; support for the DeBoer family was only growing stronger.
In a historic ruling on March 21, Judge Friedman, for the first time in Michigan's history, declared the 2004 state ban on same-sex marriage unconstitutional.
"No court record of this proceeding could ever fully convey," the decision reads, "the personal sacrifice of these two plaintiffs who seek to ensure that the state may no longer impair the rights of their children and the thousands of others now being raised by same-sex couples."
The following day, a handful of county clerk offices in four counties uncharacteristically opened their doors at 9 a.m. on a Saturday and 315 same-sex couples were married. Attorney General Bill Schuette was granted his requested stay later that day by the 6th Circuit. The case was then appealed to the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals requesting a review of the case.
The DeBoer-Rowse family spent the summer appearing at Pride festivals around the state and on Aug. 6 headed to Cincinnati, Ohio for the 6th Circuit Court hearing. The Michigan case was consolidated with other same-sex marriage cases from Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio, all located within the jurisdiction of the 6th Circuit Court.
On Oct. 6 the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) refused to hear same-sex marriage cases from 11 states that filed petitions, thus effectively determining the states' bans on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional.
Two days after the election on Nov. 6, the 6th Circuit court (in a 2-1 decision) became the first federal appellate court in over a year to rule against the freedom to marry, overturning lower court decisions in the four states of the 6th Circuit. The decision concluded that the definition of marriage should be left to the voters – not judges – and that voters should be allowed to decide whether gay marriage is a good idea or not.
In her dissent, Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey wrote that the court's decision "wholly fails to grapple with the relevant constitutional question in this appeal: whether a state's constitutional prohibition of same-sex marriage violates equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment."
The 6th Circuit decision, splitting the Appellate courts, now forces SCOTUS' hand in hearing same-sex marriage cases. Ten days after the ruling on Nov. 17, the legal team representing the DeBoer family filed a petition with SCOTUS requesting a review of their case in the upcoming 2015 cycle. The country may know if the court will review the case as early as Jan. 9, 2015.
