Supreme Court Sets a Date for Marriage Cases

The Supreme Court will hear arguments in a consolidated marriage equality case from four states on April 28, reports SCOTUSblog.

In a departure from standard procedure, audio recording from inside the courtroom will be released by 2 p.m. the day of the hearing, according to SCOTUSblog. The Supreme Court does not allow video recording inside its chambers.

The nine Justices of the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a consolidated case from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which last November became the first (and is still the only) federal appeals court to uphold any state's marriage ban since the Supreme Court's landmark June 2013 decision in U.S. v. Windsor. The consolidated case contains lawsuits that originated in Michigan, Ohio, Tennessee, and Kentucky.

Attorneys on both sides of the issue, in all four cases, will have a combined two-and-a-half hours to address two central questions posed by the Court when it announced its review of the marriage cases in January.Those questions, which encompass the fundamental issues raised in all four cases, are:

"Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex?" and "Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?"

After April's oral argument, the court can issue its ruling at any time. However, most court-watchers expect the decision to come down at the end of the court's term, which falls in late June. Regardless of how the court rules, the decision is widely expected to settle the issue of marriage equality on a national level.