TODAY: SCOTUS Conference On Marriage

A reminder from Lambda Legal:

On September 29, the Supreme Court will assemble for a private conference where they will take their first look at potentially hearing one or more of the pending cases. All of the marriage cases decided by the federal courts of appeal since the DOMA ruling are scheduled for this conference. Seven petitions to hear the four decisions affecting five states— three from Virginia, and one each from Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah, and Wisconsin — will be submitted to the Justices at this session. Lambda Legal supported the petitions on behalf of our clients in both the Bostic case (with the ACLU) in Virginia and the Baskin case in Indiana.

In this conference on September 29th, the Justices can vote to grant review in any one or any combination of the marriage cases before them, or none of them. We won’t hear what the Court has done on the 29th, of course. Usually, the cases granted review will be issued as part of an orders list, which is generally released on the Monday morning after the Justices’ private conference. However, the Court has been known to issue an orders list earlier than that in order to expedite briefing and related activities, so we could possibly hear as early as Tuesday, September 30th, whether the Court will hear a marriage case and, if so, which one or more it has selected for review.

Because the LGBT movement was just in this same watchful position last year, we remember that there can be delays in issuing orders. The Court’s decisions about which case or cases to hear involves a good deal of complexity and may not be made right away. If the Court does grant review of any marriage cases any time up to the middle of January, arguments will be scheduled some time in the spring, and a final decision would be expected by next summer.