No same-sex marriages in Puerto Rico — yet

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Scotus:

No same-sex marriages in Puerto Rico — yet

 

By Lyle Denniston on Mar 9, 2016 at 6:03 pm

Ruling that the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to Puerto Rico, a federal trial judge in San Juan has refused to strike down that commonwealth’s ban on same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court’s decision last June in Obergefell v. Hodges was based on that amendment alone, and a series of century-old Supreme Court rulings put the island outside of that provision, U.S. District Judge Juan M. Perez-Gimenez declared in a ten-page opinion released on Tuesday.

 

That decision put the judge in direct conflict with a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit last July 8 saying that the Puerto Rico’s ban is unconstitutional under Obergefell. The First Circuit had been urged by both sides in that case — same-sex couples on one side and the governor and other commonwealth officials on the other side — to nullify the ban.

 

The First Circuit said it was wiping out a decision by Judge Perez-Gimenez last October, upholding the ban, but for different reasons than he used on Tuesday after the case had been sent back to him by the First Circuit.