Late Monday afternoon a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals blocked gay marriages from restarting in California.
Same-sex marriage had been slated to begin at 5 p.m. PDT on Wednesday pending District Court Judge Vaughn Walker’s ruling in the wake of his turnover of Proposition 8. The court’s intervention assures gay marriages can’t resume until at least December; the appeals court fast-tracked the case to a Dec. 6th hearing.
Regardless if you see the delay as necessary or a disappointment, from a purely legal point of view it makes sense to let the court examine the matter without the backdrop of thousands of marriages taking place which might then be flipped over into the illegal category. Hearing the case in only four months is a clear indication the appeals court is taking the matter seriously as it should be.
There is plenty of room for debate in the meantime.
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