Federal judge orders Alabama official to issue marriage licenses to gay couples

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/12/alabama-same-sex-marriages-federal-judge

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The dramatic standoff involving more than 40 probate judges in Alabama who are refusing to administer same-sex marriage has been intensified by a federal court that has ordered an official in Mobile to begin issuing licenses or face possible consequences.

US district judge Callie Granade has bolstered her own ruling from three weeks ago that found that Alabama’s ban on gay marriages unconstitutional. On Thursday she ordered the probate judge in Mobile, the state’s third largest city, to conform to that stricture.

Related: In love and desperate to marry: gay Alabama couple denied by a judges' revolt

Don Davis has kept his probate office in Mobile closed since Monday in defiance of federal instructions to allow same-sex marriages to go ahead. He has cited the opinion of the chief justice of the state’s supreme court, Roy Moore, who has given a counter-order to probate judges that they should not participate in gay marriages, as to do so would be to violate the word of God.

Granade ruled: “Judge Davis may not deny them a license on the ground that plaintiffs constitute same-sex couples or because it is prohibited by the sanctity of marriage.”

Davis is one of 44 out of 67 probate judges in Alabama who have joined what amounts to a group revolt against the federal will. On Monday the US supreme court, the highest judicial panel in the land, essentially backed Granade’s enforcement of gay marriage in the state pending a full consideration of the issue by the nine justices later this year.

Thursday’s development was welcomed by supporters of gay marriage. Shannon Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, said: “Today’s ruling by Judge Granade provides clear direction to Judge Davis and other probate judges and will help ensure that all same-sex couples in Alabama, regardless of whether they live, have the freedom to marry.”

But Granade’s insistence that Davis must bow to her ruling does not bring the dispute to an end by any means. Her judgement on Thursday applies only to Mobile, and it is not clear that it will be strong enough to bring the other 43 refusenik probate judges to heel.

It is not even clear whether Davis himself will now knuckle under. In a hearing earlier on Thursday, his lawyer told Granade that if she ordered the probate judge to start issuing marriage licenses to gay couples Davis would review the ruling and take “appropriate” action.