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Utah will ask Supreme Court to rule on gay marriage ban

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State officials in Utah will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to determine whether gay and lesbian couples have a constitutional right to state-level marriage rights and benefits.

Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes on Wednesday announced that he intends to petition the high court sometime in the next few weeks, in the hopes of reversing the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent ruling declaring the state’s anti-gay marriage law unconstitutional.

“Attorney General Reyes has a sworn duty to defend the laws of our state,” a spokeswoman for the Attorney General’s office said in an email, adding that Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage “is presumed to be constitutional unless the highest court deems otherwise.”

If the Supreme Court grants Mr. Reyes’ request for a hearing, it will likely be the high court’s first opportunity to directly address the legality of state-level same-sex marriage bans.

Last year, the court struck down provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act that prohibited federal recognition of legal same-sex marriage, reasoning that the law violated married gay and lesbian couples constitutional right to due process.

That right, along with the constitutional right to equal protection under the law, is at the center of the more than two dozen federal lawsuits seeking to overturn state-level prohibitions of same-sex marriage.

The Supreme Court heard similar arguments in a case challenging the legality of California’s “Proposition 8” — a voter-approved amendment to the California Constitution barring same-sex marriage — but dismissed the case on procedural grounds.

Also on Wednesday, a Colorado state judge struck down that state’s prohibitions on same-sex marriage, echoing rulings by state and federal district judges overturning gay marriage bans in Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, Idaho, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Wisconsin, Indiana and Kentucky.

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