Duly Noted ...

 Michigan sued for failure to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriage

Attorney Stephanie D. Myott of the law firm Rhoades McKee filed a lawsuit on behalf of Bruce T. Morgan and Brian P. Merucci in the United States District Court for the Western District of Michigan seeking recognition of Morgan and Merucci’s out-of-state marriage by the State of Michigan.

Morgan and Merucci are Michigan residents who have been in a committed relationship for seven years. Morgan was diagnosed with inoperable brain cancer in 2011, and the couple made a decision to marry in New York in 2013. When they got home, their marriage was recognized by the federal government but not by their home state.
 
On March 21, 2014, in DeBoer v. Snyder, Judge Bernard Friedman held that Michigan’s constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and enjoined its enforcement. The effect of the ruling was to authorize the performance of same-sex marriages in Michigan and to recognize the thousands of same-sex couples living in Michigan with marriage licenses from other states.

Morgan was overjoyed with the decision because he believed that it meant that Michigan now would offer him and Merucci the same rights and benefits it does any married couple. “If I am in the hospital, I want to know that Brian can be there at my bedside, as my spouse, and that the hospital will recognize the decisions he makes regarding my care... We simply want equal treatment under the law,” he said.

On March 25, 2014, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals stayed Judge Friedman’s decision after approximately 300 same-sex marriages were performed in Michigan. On March 26, Gov. Snyder issued a statement that those marriages were valid, but that Michigan would not recognize them pending the Sixth Circuit appeal. Gov. Snyder failed to acknowledge the thousands of married same-sex couples with out-of-state marriage licenses living in Michigan when the ban was lifted.

“At the moment when Judge Friedman struck down Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban, the thousands of marriages of same-sex couples in Michigan at that time whose marriages were performed before March 21, 2014 in other states took effect in Michigan pursuant to the Full Faith and Credit Clause. Michigan must recognize Bruce and Brian’s New York marriage,” said Myott. “Governor Snyder only addressed the couples who married in Michigan after the DeBoer ruling.”

After the ban was struck down, Morgan and Merucci sent a deed conveying their home to themselves as tenants by the entirety—a form of real property ownership available only to married couples—to Kent County Register of Deeds Mary Hollinrake for recording. She refused to record it; Hollinrake is named as a defendant in this lawsuit for her denial of Morgan and Merucci’s right to that ownership.

Another lawsuit has been filed in the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of the same-sex couples who married in Michigan in the window between Judge Friedman’s ruling and the Sixth Circuit’s stay. “To the best of our knowledge, this is the only case in Michigan regarding the enforceability of the thousands of out-of-state same-sex marriages that took effect in Michigan when Judge Friedman ruled in DeBoer,” said Myott.

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