<b><i>BREAKING NEWS:</b></i> Supreme Court to Hear Historic Same-Sex Marriage Cases

The justices will hear arguments in Hollingsworth v. Perry, which asks whether the Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment bars California from defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The second challenge is U.S. v. Windsor, raising the question of whether Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the equal protection guarantee of the Fifth Amendment as applied to same-sex couples who are legally married under their state laws.

In both cases, the justices also will consider procedural problems that could affect their ability to reach the merits of the challenges. In the Perry case, which stems from California's passage of Proposition 8, a ban on same-sex marriage, the Court ordered the parties to brief and argue whether the proponents of Prop 8 had standing to appeal the lower court's judgment. In the Windsor case, the Court added two questions: whether the Executive Branch's agreement with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit that DOMA's Section 3 was unconstitutional deprives the justices of jurisdiction to decide the case, and whether the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives, which defended DOMA in the lower court, has standing.