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Goin’ to the Courthouse and We’re Gonna Get Married

The impediments to same-sex marriage in North Carolina have fallen like dominos over the past ten days. On Monday, October 6, the United States Supreme Court denied certiorari review in Rainey v. Bostic, No. 14-153, 2014 WL 3924685 (U.S. October 6, 2014), thus declining to reconsider the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals’ conclusion in Bostic v. Schaefer, 760 F.3d 352 (4th Cir. 2014), that Virginia’s same-sex marriage bans, which are substantively identical to the constitutional and statutory bans in North Carolina, violate the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.  The Fourth Circuit issued its mandate in Bostic later that day. Four days later, United States District Judge for the Western District of North Carolina Max. O. Cogburn, Jr. ruled that North Carolina’s laws prohibiting same-sex marriage were unconstitutional and enjoined the registers of deeds named as defendants in the action pending before him from enforcing the state’s marriage laws to the extent that they prohibit a person from marrying another person of the same gender, prohibit recognition of same-sex marriages lawfully solemnized in other U.S. jurisdictions, or seek to punish clergy or other officiants who solemnize the union of same-sex couples. Minutes after Judge Cogburn issued his ruling—after 5 p.m. on a Friday—registers of deeds issued marriage licenses to eager same-sex couples, and the courthouse weddings began.

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