PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE
Atlanta Bar
Amicus Brief Policy
“
By Jacquelyn H. Saylor
The Saylor Law Firm LLP
“‘There is widespread consensus
among the district courts of the
Sixth Circuit as well as other
Courts of Appeals that laws
such as the Marriage Bans
unconstitutionally disadvantage
gays and lesbians without any
legitimate justification.’”
F
our Marriage Ban cases on writs of Certiorari from
the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals were argued before
the Supreme Court of the United States on April 28,
2015. 1 In February 2015 the Atlanta Bar Association was
asked to sign onto an amicus brief supporting four sets of
Petitioners who sued the Governors of Tennessee, Michigan
and Kentucky and the Director of the Ohio Department of
Health due to the “constitutional and statutory bans in those
states which prohibit same-sex couples from marrying and
prohibit recognition of legally performed marriages in other
states (collectively the Marriage Bans.)” 2 James Obergefell
was one of the Ohio petitioners who sued the Ohio Health
Director when the department did not recognize Obergefell
as the lawful husband of John Arthur on Mr. Arthur’s death
certificate. The two men, who had been together for two
decades, were married in a medical transport plane on the
tarmac at an airport in Maryland, where same-sex marriage
is legal. Mr. Arthur was 48 when he died of Lou Gehrig’s
disease. 3
4 THE ATLANTA LAWYER
May 2015
Two years earlier, the Atlanta Bar was asked to join on
an amicus brief, Hollingsworth v. Perry, resulting from a
Proposition 8 ballot initiative in California which limited
marriage to a union between a man and a woman. Samesex couples who wished to marry filed suit in federal court
and challenged Proposition 8 under the Due Process and
Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. The
District Court declared Prop 8 unconstitutional and the Ninth
Circuit allowed an appeal by proponents of the ballot initiative.
The Bar has had a written Amicus Brief Policy since 2007.
There is a procedure for evaluating an amicus brief request.
Under the Atlanta Bar Statement of Policy, “any amicus
brief filed by or on behalf of the Atlanta Bar … must relate
to the practice of law or the administration of justice and be
filed only at the appellate level;…” 4 Under the leadership of
President Lynn Roberson, the Atlanta Bar Board of Directors
voted to support the amicus brief in the Hollingsworth v. Perry
case. In June 2013 the U. S. Supreme Court held that the
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