Arguments at the Court are scheduled for Tuesday.
But rulings are typically in June, right?
Rulings can come any time but landmark ones are typically released at the end of the term which is late June.
There is currently a proposed class action suit before the same judge who overturned the Alabama SSM ban that is basically seeking to have the federal court override the ALSC. I doubt it will conclude before SCOTUS rules, though (especially if it has to certify a class.)
Maybe not. 9th Circuit allows states to have SSM but Guam as a territory needs to abide by federal law which I believe is still DOMA.
The 9th circuit opinion (Latta v Otter) said that a ban on same sex marriage violates rights under the US Constitution. So even though Guam is a territory and not a state, the decision still applies.
Why do they do this? Just to keep us all in suspense?
I hope it’s because they are working up until the last minute to get things right.
Or to test the political winds for as long as possible before committing themselves.
The vote is taken before the decisions are crafted, obviously. It does take time [for the clerks 
] to write all that shit down!
They can change their minds at any time until the decision is issued. No way to be sure how often that happens, though.
According to Bob Woodward’s “The Brethren”, about the Berger Court, there was at least one case where the initial vote was 5-4 on a case, and the justice picked to write the majority decision wrote such an extreme and uncompromising decision, one of the initial members of the majority switched his vote, thereby making it 5-4 on the other side.
I just can’t imagine the court going against SSM at this point in time. The repercussions would just be terrible.
I hope they don’t keep us waiting too long.
This is the court that gave us Citizens United. Their legacy is already sealed for that. But this could be the Plessy v Ferguson nail in the coffin.
Here is the linkto audio of the oral argument on the first question.
And here is the audio of the oral argument on the second question.
My take away is this wasn’t a very good day for the anti-SSM side.
I don’t think they CAN have a good day if on that day they’re asked to explain their reasoning. They do better when appealing to the unthinking mob.
I agree but the verbal floundering was fun to listen to. I’m about 30 minutes into listening to the argument on question #2 and the justices have the lawyer for the States desperately trying to justify his position. For crying out loud, Scalia is actually giving him a hard time!
I’m inclined to wonder if this will end up being 6-3 with Roberts joining the majority rather than 5-4 in favor of SSM.
I was thinking that too, although the court might just find a reason to punt and let the political process continue. The momentum is strongly in favor of SSM anyway.
There ARE serious problems with leaving a circuit split in place. Not the least of which are the problems with having an entire class of citizens with a variable state of marriage that’s location-dependent. Once the decisions in favor started to come down the writing was on the wall. When they became a majority of the circuits, it was all over. The Court isn’t going to decide against. I’m very confident of that.
That’s without factoring in Roberts’s business alignment (as opposed to Scalia and Thomas’s religious/ideological alignment). The business sector in America wishes all of this would just go away, and they don’t really care which way it goes away. The path of least resistance at this point is to legalize nationally. So I think that’s how Roberts is going to vote.
I think it is clear that Kennedy is struggling hard with this. His comment about expressing skepticism that the courts should decide this question when sodomy was only legalized ten years ago was telling.
I realize that this decision is of great importance to many people and I don’t mean to diminish it by cheering on the legal aspects of it, but I don’t believe any decision in history will have been so close: 4-4 with the deciding vote absolutely agonizing over which way to decide the case.
I think Kennedy is struggling with his ideas of federalism and judicial restraint versus his appreciation and understanding of gay couples. It will certainly be a historic case no matter the result.