Wisconsin Supreme Court To Hear Challenge To Gay Marriage Ban

Yesterday Wisconsin's Supreme Court added a challenge to that state's ban on same-sex marriage to its calendar.

The state Supreme Court on Thursday said it will hear a challenge to the 2006 constitutional amendment that prohibited same-sex marriage. The order added the case to the agenda for the court's next term, which begins this fall and ends in June 2010. No date for oral arguments was set. The challenge to the constitutional change was filed in 2007 by Bill McConkey, a Door County resident who teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh and who has a daughter who is gay. McConkey argued that the constitutional change was improperly put before voters in 2006, but a Dane County judge ruled against him. McConkey said voters should have been asked to vote on two separate amendments, instead of the one put before them. Lester Pines, McConkey's attorney, said the wording of the 2006 constitutional amendment improperly asked voters to do two things: define the only valid marriage as between a man and woman and define the legal rights of the unmarried.

Is this the first state Supreme Court (other than California) to consider overturning these bans?