MA: Supreme Judicial Court Limits Extent of Gay Marriage Ruling

Today the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court refused to strike down a seldom-used 1913 law which banned citizens from getting married in Massachusetts if the marriage would not be valid or recognized in the couple's home jurisdiction. The law was initially passed to prevent interracial couples from getting married in Massachusetts since most states banned interracial marriages at the time.

Today, 38 states officially ban gay marriage either through statutes or initiatives generally called "mini-DOMAs" after the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act which was signed into law by (former University of Arkansas Law Professor) President William Jefferson Clinton.

Today's ruling only ruled that couples from states which have banned gay marriage can not travel to Massachusetts to obtain a legal marriage but remanded the case back to a lower court to determine whether the law applies to couples from states like New York and Rhode Island which have not officially banned gay marriage.

Oral arguments are set for May 31 before New York's highest court, the Court of Appeals, on the question of whether gay marriage is legal in that state. The attorney general Eliot Spitzer, while arguing that current New York law does not allow gay marriage is running for Governor this year and has recently issued a statement in favor of gay marriage.