Resource: Tanco v. Haslam

Three same-sex couples validly married outside the state challenged Tennessee laws that prohibited the state from recognizing their marriages and that excluded them from the benefits of marriage available to married opposite-sex couples. On March 14, 2014, District Court Judge Aleta A. Trauger ruled that Tennessee must recognize the plaintiffs’ marriages, holding that the state’s discriminatory marriage laws violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and predicted in her opinion that “proscriptions against same-sex marriage will soon become a footnote in the annals of American history.” The state appealed Judge Trauger’s ruling to the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, which stayed that ruling pending appeal