American Family Association President Tim Wildmon, right, has said that U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, left, and Elena Kagan, right, should recuse themselves from marriage equality cases because they have officiated at same-sex marriages.
The American Family Association has called on U.S. Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg and Elena Kagan to recuse themselves from the marriage equality cases the court announced last Friday (Jan. 16), that it will be hearing appeals on, likely in April. Ginsberg and Kagan should not participate in the hearing, AFA President Tim Wildmon has declared, because they have both officiated as same-sex weddings, according to reports by the UK LGBT news site Pink News.
SCOTUS announced Friday that the court will accept appeals on four marriage equality cases — from Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee. The four cases are from the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals, the only federal appellate circuit court to rule against marriage equality since June 2013, when the Supreme Court struck down that portion of the federal Defense of Marriage Act that banned the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in jurisdictions that honor marriage equality.
Last October, the Supreme Court declined to hear appeals of cases in which other federal appellate courts had ruled in favor of marriage equality. And in December the the Supreme Court declined to extend a stay on a federal trial court ruling in favor of marriage equality in Florida, a decision that allowed legal same-sex marriages to begin there on Jan. 6. (A state judge who had also ruled in favor of equality but had also stayed her ruling lifted that stay on Jan. 5, so the first legal same-sex marriages in Florida were performed that day.)
Pink News notes that Ginsberg “has quietly officiated a number of same-sex weddings,” the first in 2013, while Kagan presided over the wedding ceremony of her former law-clerk and his partner last year. That, to Wildmon, indicates “Both of these justices’ personal and private actions that actively endorse gay marriage clearly indicate how they would vote on same-sex marriage cases before the Supreme Court.”
But the Pink News posts also notes that the other justices’ previous actions could be seen as indicating bias as well: “However, Mr Wildmon’s claims have no discernible legal basis; similarly arbitrary claims could be made that as seven of the nine justices are themselves married to people of the opposite sex, the entire court should be recused.”