Heh...every day a new ruling comes out and they are running 100% in favor of striking down bans. Every time I see this news I run over to the nomblog just to see what they have to say...they don't bother responding anymore...I assume they're frantically sending out resumes. I wonder how their fundraising is going nowadays.

I've read that this will overturn Colorado's constitutional ban because we're in the same district as Utah. God, that would be sweet.

Unless there is some narrowing language in the opinion, this should be the law in the whole 10th Circuit. Thanks a lot Utah AG. You just settled the issue in 6 states in one shot. This includes OK, NM, KS, CO, WY and UT.

One other recent, very interesting development. The 9th Circuit rejected en banc review of its SmithKline ruling. Without getting into all the complications, what this means is that "Heightened Scrutiny" is the review basis for anything having to do with discrimination against gays in that Circuit. Or, in other words, the state of Idaho has a fucking huge mountain to climb in its appeal of the same-sex marriage case they lost.

The Tenth Circuit made today's ruling entirely on "Rational Basis Review," which is the most deferential to states' offered reasons for enacting discriminatory laws. Heightened Scrutiny is much less deferential and a state would have to prove its primary purpose wasn't simply a desire to discriminate, even if it presents a plausible reason for the law.

@4: between the Ninth's denial of the en banc motion (filed by one of its own judges!) and the Tenth upholding the district court ruling striking Utah's DOMA law, this will bring marriage equality to the entire western half of the country.

This is fun.

The rulings we've been seeing so far in the last year or so are all lower court rulings. This is a federal appeals court ruling. So as I understand it, @3 is correct; it should apply to all the states in the 10th Circuit.

It's also notable that this isn't the notoriously liberal 9th Circuit, which people assume would probably rule in favor of equality.

Good to see a win on its way up the ladder to the Supreme Court.

@6 My powers of prediction are horrible (I had Indiana picked as the 50th state likely to get marriage equality), but it strikes me that there's at least a moderate chance that the Supreme Court may just deny cert and let the Circuits do this, unless we get one or more Circuits that come to opposite conclusions.

I don't think, given Windsor and the carefully written lower court rulings we've seen so far, that the Supreme Court would be comfortable overruling them. So, given the choice of taking a case and "imposing" same-sex marriage on the entire country at one fell swoop, the conservative Justices may decide to just duck the issue and let things drag out as long as possible. (Which at this rate isn't actually going to take that long.)

Further thought on #7...

The four conservative Justices, and Kennedy, the swing vote, are all Catholic. Not sure how conflicted they might be between their religion and the law (so far I haven't noticed a lot), but I could see them ducking this case to avoid nasty words from Rome aimed in their direction.

@ 8, interesting stereotyping there - Catholic pols being more concerned with pleasing the pope than fulfilling their constitutionally defined duty. Do you really think Scalia or the others would duck out for any reason? For that matter, do you see Francis decrying it? I may be wrong but I think he has done no such condemning of the nations (such as much-more-Catholic-than-us Mexico) that have already recognized marriage equality.

If religion is motivating the conservative justices, rest assured that they already have found ways to interpret the law to accord with their beliefs.

@9 The Pope seems relatively mellow, I'll agree. But his American Cardinals and Bishops are anything but. More than a few have been particularly outspoken against, and condemnatory of, any challenge to the "traditional definition" of marriage.

@7: Only 4 justices are required to grant cert. SCOTUS can take this even if Scalia, Thomas, Alito, Roberts, and Kennedy don't want to.