Yesterday a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld four states’ bans on same-sex marriage, significantly increasing the possibility that the issue will make its way to the Supreme Court soon. As Lyle Denniston reported for this blog yesterday, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union who represent one set of challengers to the ban announced that they would be asking the Supreme Court to review yesterday’s decision, written by Judge Jeffrey Sutton, “right away.” Other coverage of yesterday’s decision comes from Nina Totenberg of NPR, Robert Barnes of The Washington Post, and from Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed, who spoke to the lawyers in all four cases about the next steps. Commentary comes from Michael Dorf at Dorf on Law, who concludes that the ruling “makes it nearly certain that the SCOTUS will finally have to grant cert in a SSM case,” from Kenneth Jost, who at Jost on Justice describes the decision as a “well disguised” blessing for advocates of same-sex marriage, and from Steven Mazie at The Economist’s Democracy in America blog, who argues that, although Judge Sutton is “playing kick-the-can with gay marriage,” “ironically, he may well be bringing the issue closer to resolution, by creating a split in the lower courts that only the Supremes can resolve.”
Monday’s oral argument in Zivotofsky v. Kerry, the Jerusalem passport case, also continues to spur coverage and commentary. Bill Mears reported on the case for CNN, with commentary coming from Jonathan Keim at the National Review Online and Danny Hensel at Article 8. The National Constitution Center also hosted a podcast on the case, featuring Eugene Kontorovich, Michael Ramsey, and Jeffrey Rosen.
Commentary on Wednesday’s argument in Yates v. United States, in which the Court is considering whether a commercial fisherman can be convicted under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s “anti-shredding” provision for ordering that seventy-two undersized fish be thrown overboard, comes from Steven Mazie at The Economist, Jonathan Keim at the National Review Online, and Mark Miller at the Pacific Legal Foundation’s Liberty Blog.
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