Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has filed a brief with a federal appeals court seeking to overturn a judge’s decision to strike down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. In the filing, Schuette says the case is about voters’ rights, not the right of same-sex couples to get married.
Schuette is asking the US Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse Judge Bernard Friedman’s ruling that Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban violates the 14th Amendment’s “equal protection” clause. Schuette’s brief says Friedman’s decision essentially declared almost 3 million Michigan voters who approved the state’s same-sex marriage ban to be “irrational,” as well as the voters in other states who approved similar laws.
“It denies each of those voters the dignity of a meaningful vote, labels each with the stigma of irrationality, and treats Michigan’s electorate as incapable of deciding this profound and sensitive issue,” the filing says.
Schuette turned to the US Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding Michigan’s affirmative action ban for support. The brief pulls quotes from Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion that courts should show great deference to laws that are directly enacted by voters – such as the Michigan Marriage Amendment that was adopted in 2004.
The response from attorneys for April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse is due early next month. The lesbian couple challenged Michigan’s marriage ban to win the right to jointly adopt the children they’re raising together.
More than 300 same-sex couples in Michigan were married before the Friedman decision was put on hold by the court of appeals while it hears the case.
