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Link to News Article ->>
Utah same-sex marriage case could be thrown out on a technicality | The Salt Lake Tribune
Link to District Court Judges Decision -->>
http://www.utd.uscourts.gov/documents/213cv217_memdec.pdf
Link to Oral Arguments at the 10th Circuit Court -->>
http://www.uscourts.gov/courts/ca10/13-4178.mp3
The linked news article says that the appeal could be thrown out on a technicality based on standing. The 3rd link is to the actual oral arguments of the case and there was some time spent questioning "Standing" within the case.
If you look at the District Court Judges ruling, the plaintiffs sued and name County Clerks as the defendants because it is the responsibility of the County Clerks to issue Civil Marriage licenses. That seems to be pretty common, the two cases in Virginia currently waiting for oral arguments at the 4th Circuit Court involve suits with the County Clerk as name defendants.
Here is the kicker on why the appeal could be dismissed. The Governor and Attorney General filed an appeal - but the County Clerk did not. Since the County Clerk did not appeal the case they lost, they are accepting the decision of the District Court Judge as valid. Since the Governor and AG weren't party to the original suit, they wouldn't have standing to appeal. The idea is that to have standing you have to be a named party in the suit, neither the Governor nor the AG was a named party in the suit (officially the plantiffs were Derek Kitchen,Moudi Sbeity, Karen Archer, Kate Call, Laurie Wood and Kody Partridge and the defendents were County Clerks (Gary Herbert, John Swallow, and Sherrie Swensen)).
With no standing to appeal, the appeal is dismissed and the lower court's ruling remains valid. We saw the same thing with Prop 8, because the government parties choose not to appeal, and the appeal was made by those without standing, the appeal was dismissed and the lower courts ruling remained the final decision reinstating Civil Marriage in California.
If this were to happen here, I can see some heads exploding as SSCM becomes legal in Utah.
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Now with that said, I support 100% that the Governor and AG would have legal standing to defend duly passed laws of a State. I think winning based on "Standing" in such an important case is kind of a chicken-shit way to win. Quite dicking around with "standing" and let's get a ruling on the merits of the case. Either there is a compelling government interest to violate the Equal Protection and Due Process rights of law abiding citizens based on the gender composition of the couple - or their isn't.
By summer we could have rulings out of the 4th, 5th, 6th and 10th Circuit Courts which would line up appeals to the SCOTUS for the term beginning in October 2014.
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