After the
Alabama State Supreme Court issued a ruling and order last night that probate judges must halt the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples, it appears that all the probate judges in Alabama are complying with that order. That includes Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis, who is also under a federal court order to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
From Equality On Trial:
Mobile County’s probate judge has stopped issuing any marriage licenses while he reviews yesterday’s decision from the Alabama Supreme Court:
MOBILE, Ala. — The probate court in one of Alabama’s biggest counties says it won’t issue any marriage licenses at all after the Alabama Supreme Court disagreed with a federal court and upheld the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
Mobile County’s probate court posted a notice on its website Wednesday saying it is halting all marriages while it reviews the decision.
Mobile County’s probate judge is still under a federal court order requiring him to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. It’s unclear how he can stop issuing licenses while he’s bound by that order.
I will update this diary as we learn more about what is taking place in Alabama as a result of the Alabama Supreme Court ruling.
Update 1:
From AL.com:
Madison County Probate Judge Tommy Ragland stopped issuing same-sex marriage licenses Wednesday morning after the Alabama Supreme Court ordered a halt late Tuesday. "We're not issuing any same-sex licenses," Ragland said in his courthouse office. The office is issuing licenses to male-female couples.
The biggest question his office is getting today is from same-sex couples who got licenses from Ragland during the weeks between a federal judge's order legalizing the marriages in February and the Supreme Court ruling Tuesday night. Ragland's office issued about 200 same-sex licenses, most of them in the days just after the federal judge's order, and those couples want to know if their marriages are legal.
"I told them we don't know," Ragland's chief clerk said.
Huntsville is located in Madison County.
Update 2:
Slate has a great article about the Alabama Supreme Court opinion/ruling.
On Tuesday night, the Alabama Supreme Court had a humiliating and highly public meltdown. In a 148-page opinion, the justices held that Alabama’s gay marriage ban remained valid—purporting to overrule a federal judge who recently struck down the ban and ordered probate judges throughout the state to issue marriage licenses to gay couples. Only one justice dissented, while another concurred; the other seven joined a bizarre, prolix, occasionally unintelligible opinion that challenges fundamental notions of federal supremacy, constitutional order, and equal protection of the law. It is a gruesome, mangled masterpiece of rambling illogic and venomous vitriol. It is the judicial version of a nervous breakdown, and it deserves to be read in full.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Tuesday’s opinion is that, on its face and by its own terms, it simply does not make sense. Certain portions of the opinion blatantly contradict others, while several sections draw conclusions that are contradicted soon after. (This jumble may be due to the fact that the opinion was issued “per curiam,” meaning it has no single author and was presumably co-written by the seven justices who joined it in full.)
And, borrowing George’s tactic of disparaging all same-sex marriages as illegitimate, the justices repeatedly put scare quotes around “marriage” and “marriage license” when applying the words to gay couples. This court is not one for subtlety.
Go read the rest of it.