BY AJ TRAGER
WASHINGTON D.C. – Less than a month before the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments regarding the constitutionality of same-sex marriage, the two lawyers who will present the case have officially been named.
Lawyers from the Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky cases recently issued a brief to SCOTUS requesting that argument time for question one and two be divided between two lawyers, a request that was not favored by the high court.
SCOTUS requested that a single representative per question present before the court and the petitioners have recognized Mary L. Bonauto from the Boston based Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders. She will represent question one discussing if the 14th Amendment requires a state to issue same-sex marriage licenses, and Douglas Hallward-Driemeier, a partner in the Washington office of Ropes & Gray, will represent question two addressing states' recognition of same-sex marriages performed out of state.
"I'm humbled to be standing up for the petitioners from Kentucky and Michigan who seek the freedom to marry, along with the Michigan team of Carole Stanyar, Dana Nessel, Ken Mogill and Robert Sedler and with support from the other legal teams," Bonauto said in a statement March 31. "The road that we've all travelled to get here has been built by so many people who believe that marriage is a fundamental right. Same-sex couples should not be excluded from the joy, the security and the full citizenship signified by that institution. I believe the Court will give us a fair hearing, and I look forward to the day when all LGBT Americans will be able to marry the person they love."
Bonauto joined the team of four lawyers representing April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse in December after SCOTUS agreed to hear the same-sex marriage cases from Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee and Kentucky following a decision from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in favor of states' bans on same-sex marriage; that created a circuit court split.
The lawyers determined who would present the cases before the high court following a series of intense negotiations. This past weekend they met in Ann Arbor for a mock competition that ran like the legal equivalent of a bake-off. The mock trial was only one determining factor to who would represent the couples seeking marriage equality. The choice of Hallward-Driemeier to represent question two was determined before the weekend, Reuters reported. The team of 37 lawyers from the four states filed their brief with SCOTUS March 31 stating who would present before the Court.
"April and Jayne's family, and tens of thousands of families like theirs in Michigan, will be represented by a dynamic litigator who has a history of fighting and winning LGBT rights cases in states and districts across the country," said Nessel, original co-counsel for the DeBoer family in DeBoer v. Snyder. "We are very pleased that an attorney representing the DeBoer-Rowse family will be addressing the issue of marriage equality for what we hope will be the last time in our nation's history."
Bonauto has never presented before SCOTUS but has been an integral force in the path for nationwide marriage equality. She is an architect of national same-sex marriage litigation and led the fight in Massachusetts on behalf of seven gay and lesbian couples seeking the freedom to marry in 2001 which led to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts in 2004. Since then, with her dedicated work with GLAD, Bonauto has contributed to the same-sex marriage efforts in Connecticut and Maine along with her work on many other legal cases.
Hallward-Driemeier leads the firm's appellate and SCOTUS practice and has argued 14 cases before SCOTUS. He was the assistant to the Solicitor General from 2004-2009 where he actively argued before SCOTUS and filed over 150 briefs. Hallward-Driemeier's most recent case before SCOTUS was Executive Benefits Insurance Agency v. Arkison, a case regarding bankruptcy judges' jurisdiction.
Arguing for the four states and against same-sex marriage will be John Bursch, a former Michigan solicitor general who has argued eight cases before SCOTUS between 2011 and 2013, and Joseph Whalen, a Tennessee associate solicitor general focused primarily in the areas of employment litigation, labor law and commercial litigation.
Currently, 37 states including the District of Columbia permit same-sex marriage, an effort that was expedited in October when SCOTUS refused to hear the appeals from states that had not yet ruled on same-sex marriage but fell under the decisions made by appellate courts.
Oral arguments are to be heard by SCOTUS on April 28 with an expected decision by the end of June.
