AFER To SCOTUS: Hear Our Virginia Case

The American Foundation for Equal Rights today filed a SCOTUS brief which demands that the Court hear their Virginia marriage equality suit.

“Forty-seven years ago, Mildred and Richard Loving passionately argued that the Supreme Court must end the unjust laws that dare to tell us who we can and cannot love,” said Plaintiffs’ lead co-counsel Ted Olson of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.  “Today, almost half a century later, it is time thousands of gay and lesbian couples across America are extended that same promise of equality and freedom that the Supreme Court granted to the Lovings. Our plaintiffs have already fought for, in two separate courts, a constitutional promise they have been denied. Now, the Supreme Court must take up the Bostic case, answer once and for all the surpassingly important constitutional question of marriage equality, and rule decisively in favor of the fundamental right to marry for every same-sex couple.” Bostic was filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia in July 2013 on behalf of two loving Virginia couples—Tim Bostic and Tony London of Norfolk, and Carol Schall and Mary Townley of Richmond—to challenge the constitutionality of Virginia’s marriage laws on the grounds that they violate the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The same demand has already been filed by Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring and by the Alliance Defending Freedom, acting on behalf of the Norfolk County Clerk.