Today, four same-sex couples from Indiana filed suit in federal court against the Governor of their state, challenging its discriminatory marriage laws which prevent them from getting married or from being recognized as already validly married. The suit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.
The case will be called Love, et al. v. Pence.
The filed complaint, which can be read here, alleges that several Indiana statutes infringe the couples' rights under the U.S. Constitution, including their Fourteenth Amendment rights of due process and equal protection. The claims are similar to the claims alleged by couples all across the United States, including in Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Texas, and Kentucky. Since the landmark 2013 Supreme Court case of United States v. Windsor, no federal court has ruled against marriage equality.
The Indiana couples are as follows:
- Melissa Love and Erin Brock, from Jeffersonville.
- Michael Drury and Lane Stumler, from New Albany.
- Jo Ann Dale and Carol Uebelhoer, from Otisco.
- Jennifer Redmond and Jana Kohorst, from Jeffersonville.
These couples are represented by the same attorneys who represent the plaintiffs in the ongoing Kentucky marriage equality cases of Bourke v. Beshear and Love v. Beshear. Those attorneys are: Shannon Fauver and Dawn Elliott of the Fauver Law Office; and Daniel Canon, Laura Landenwich, and me, Joe Dunman, of Clay Daniel Walton & Adams.
With this lawsuit, Indiana will become the twenty-seventh state to have active same-sex marriage litigation. Same-sex marriage is already fully legal in seventeen states and the District of Columbia, and same-sex marriages from those states are now formally recognized by the U.S. federal government.