A federal judge in Michigan shocked gay-rights activists and lawyers by ordering a trial to determine the fate of the state's ban on gay marriage; it was thought that an immediate decision was to be made on Wednesday, according to USA Today.
The trial will begin on Feb. 25. U.S. District Judge Bernard Friedman had refused to throw out a lawsuit from a lesbian couple challenging Michigan's ban on adoption by unmarried couples in June. Both sides laid out their case in the hearing but Friedman felt that he was unable to make a ruling without a trial, the Detroit Free Press reports.
"We're cautiously optimistic that a ruling will come," Dana Nessel, one of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs, said. "When you have waited this long for some semblance of equality, you kind of want it right now. You don't want to wait any longer."
The plaintiffs - April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse - have argued that the state's ban on gay marriage has deprived them of their right to get married and adopt each other's children. The state argues that the issue at stake is not gay marriage but whether people get to determine the law or if the courts do, according to the Detroit Free Press.
"The people of the state of Michigan should be allowed to decide Michigan law," Kristin Heyse, an assistant attorney general, said. "This is not the proper forum to decide social issues."
An amendment to the state's constitution defined marriage as only being between a man and a woman with 59 percent of the state voting in favor of the law in 2004, according to the Associated Press.
"There is no fundamental right to marry a person of the same sex, and nothing in the U.S. constitution requires or permits federal courts to invalidate a state's decision defining civil marriage as the union of one man and one woman," the state argues in court documents.
