Wednesday, January 22, 2014

And Florida Joins the Same-sex Marriage Fight

Yesterday Equality Florida, that state's leading LGBT advocacy group, filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn Florida's ban on same-sex marriage and legalize same-sex marriage in America's 4th most populous state. This means:

  • 21 states with active lawsuits directly seeking to legalize same-sex marriage
  • 4 states with active lawsuits related to same-sex marriage
  • 17 states + DC where legal same-sex marriages are on-going and uncontested
  • 1 state trying to actively ban same-sex marriage by amending its state constitution (Indiana)
It is difficult to categorize some cases as seeking to legalize marriage or only related.  In the four states with active lawsuits related to same-sex marriage, two involve couples being able to file joint state tax returns.  In Kansas a lawsuit is seeking the right of same-sex couples married in other states to file jointly on their state tax returns.  Married couples throughout the US can now file jointly on their Federal taxes.  Next door in Missouri, the governor issued a regulation allowing married same-sex couples to file jointly on their state taxes.  An anti-gay group is now suing to stop joint state tax returns in Missouri.

Wisconsin has a domestic partnership law that gives same-sex couples 44 of the 200+ state benefits of marriage.  An anti-gay group sued claiming this law runs afoul of that state's ban on same-sex marriages.  The case is proceeding there over the partnership law and not marriage.

Similarly, a Montana lawsuit is seeking all the benefits of equal civil marriage for same-sex couples but not actual marriage.

8 comments:

Unknown said...

Thank you for your good and valuable work composing and updating this map.

It may be interesting to superimpose early maps against the later ones, to show the progression as states grant marriage equality. Once SCOTUS overturns state constitutional amendments barring same sex marriage, then the map will go all one color!

tlt said...

Good job. Been looking for a compilation of the cases.

Unknown said...

This is terrific. Thank you.

Evan said...

This really is a great map! It ought to be on Wikipedia's same-sex marriage page. It does a really fantastic job of condensing the present situation into an immediately understandable format. I've been following SSM carefully, but the extent of the state suites was only really driven home, for me, by this map. Thanks for this!

Jeff Jones said...

Thank you all for the kind compliments on the map!

Jeff Jones said...

James, I think I know where to find this data. Good idea. Let me see what I can work up.

Jeff Jones said...

Evan, Thank you! I'll try to add it to Wikipedia.

Awe-Inspiring Earth: People, Places and Things! said...

Crazymaking Patchwork Quilt of Prejudice called America