By Alexandra Brodsky • @azbrodsky • 11 years ago

Breaking: NJ judge rules that same-sex couples can soon marry

The Huffington Post reports:

Judge Mary Jacobson of the Mercer County Superior Court ruled Friday that gay couples can marry in the Garden State starting October 21.

“This unequal treatment requires that New Jersey extend civil marriage to same-sex couples to satisfy equal protection guarantees of the New Jersy Constitution as interpreted by the New Jersey Supreme Court in Lewis,” wrote the judge. “Same-sex couples must be allowed to marry in order to obtain equal protection of the law under the New Jersey Constitution.”

Jacobson said she made her decision in light of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on United States v. Windsor, but the ruling is likely to be appealed.

This news comes the same day as a ruling from an Illinois judge that a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the state’s same-sex marriage ban — which the attorney general declined to defend — can proceed on due process and equal protection grounds. The decision came in response to a motion for dismissal of the case by the anti-marriage equality defense.

Washington, DC

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com. During her four years at the site, she wrote about gender violence, reproductive justice, and education equity and ran the site's book review column. She is now a Skadden Fellow at the National Women's Law Center and also serves as the Board Chair of Know Your IX, a national student-led movement to end gender violence, which she co-founded and previously co-directed. Alexandra has written for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Nation, and she is the co-editor of The Feminist Utopia Project: 57 Visions of a Wildly Better Future. She has spoken about violence against women and reproductive justice at campuses across the country and on MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, ESPN, and NPR.

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com.

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