Kansas officials said Friday that they
would ask the Supreme Court to stay a ruling striking down the
state's ban on gay marriage as an appeal is pursued.
U.S. District Judge Daniel D. Crabtree
declared the state's ban unconstitutional in a 38-page ruling handed
down Tuesday afternoon. Crabtree placed his ruling on hold until
Tuesday, November 11 at 5 PM.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt
asked the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver to stay Crabtree's
injunction. The appeals court refused.
“We conclude that defendants have
failed to make the showings necessary to obtain a stay, and we deny
the emergency motion for a stay pending appeal,” the
court said on Friday.
The court of last resort for Kansas is
the Supreme Court, which allowed several states to preserve their
bans while legal challenges wound their way to the high court, but
changed course after it allowed rulings striking down similar bans in
five states to take effect, including Oklahoma and Utah, which are in
the Tenth Circuit. Schmidt said in a statement that he believes an
appellate court ruling upholding bans in four states handed down
this week increases the likelihood that the Supreme Court will allow
the state to keep its ban in place as it appeals Crabtree's ruling.
“Because the federal District Court’s
injunction will effectively disable a provision in the Kansas
Constitution, I believe I have a duty to exhaust all of the state’s
options for appeal,” Schmidt said. “Yesterday's decision by the
Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, which held that
similar laws in four states do not violate the U. S. Constitution,
creates for the first time a split of authority among the federal
appeals courts and increases the likelihood that the U. S. Supreme
Court will address this important constitutional question.
Therefore, I will take the additional step before Tuesday of asking
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who handles these matters arising within the
Tenth Circuit, to stay the District Court’s injunction pending
appeal.”