Utah officials on Tuesday appealed to the Supreme Court a federal appeals court's order striking down the state's ban on gay marriage.

On June 25, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver delivered a split decision declaring Utah's ban unconstitutional.

“We hold that the Fourteenth Amendment protects the fundamental right to marry, establish a family, raise children, and enjoy the full protection of a state's marital laws,” the court said in its 112-page ruling. “A state may not deny the issuance of a marriage license to two persons, or refuse to recognize their marriage, based solely upon the sex of the persons in the marriage union.”

Utah's petition states that the question before the court is: “Whether the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits a state from defining or recognizing marriage only as the legal union between a man and a woman.”

“Promoting marriage as an institution designed to honor every child's fundamental right to know and be raised by a mother and father does not ban any other type of relationship. But rewriting the Constitution to impose the Tenth Circuit's marriage definition on every single State has consequences. It communicates that the marriage institution is more about adults than children. It teaches that mothers and fathers are interchangeable and therefore expendable. And it instills an incentive that citizens seeking social change should use the courts, rather than the democratic process, to achieve it. For all these reasons, the Court should grant Utah's petition and reverse the Tenth Circuit.”

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes said that the state expedited its filing in an effort to quickly resolve the matter.

“We recognize this litigation has caused uncertainty and disruption and have accordingly tried to expedite its resolution as quickly as possible by filing our petition a full month-and-a-half before its September 23rd due date,” Reyes said in a statement.

The case, heard by the appeals court in April, was the first to reach the appellate level since the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) last year. Since then, appellate courts have struck down similar bans in Virginia and Oklahoma. Defendants in those cases have also said they'll appeal to the Supreme Court.