WISCONSIN: Federal Judge Issues Stay and Injunction Halting Marriage Equality

Bad news out of Wisconsin! Federal judge Barbara Crabb finally issued a final order implementing her previously issued decision in the same-sex marriage case of Wolf v Walker in favor of marriage equality from last week and included a stay and injunction that makes it clear that no marriage licenses should be issued to same-sex couples while the matter is appealed to the U.S. 7th Circuit.

This means that the multiple counties and big cities like Madison and Milwaukee where same-sex couples were being issued marriage licenses have to stop doing so immediately.

The judge wrote in her final order that the Supreme Court's previous decision this past January to issue a stay in the case of whether Kitchen v. Herbert striking down Utah's ban on marriage equality should go into effect compelled her to do the same since the two cases are indistinguishable from each other. All this year federal judges in various jurisdictions have been striking down laws banning marriage equality in several states (Michigan, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia, and many others) usually issuing stays automatically preventing marriages from going into effect.

In some jurisdictions, notably Oregon and Pennsylvania, the state officials agreed with the ruling and thus did not appeal it, causing marriage equality to go into effect immediately in those states. However, in others, like Wisconsin, politicians have continued to battle in court to uphold their discriminatory marriage laws and are appealing to the appropriate federal appellate circuit. The 4th and 10th appellate circuits have heard oral arguments in their marriage equality cases and could issue decisions at any time, although most observers do not expect one to do so until much later this year at the earliest.

Hat/tip to Joe Jervis