News
Utah calls on Supreme Court to halt same-sex marriages
Private attorney Monte Stewart listed as ‘counsel of record’ for the state
Utah Gov. Gary Herbert is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to halt same-sex marriages in Utah (Photo public domain).
After nearly 11 days have passed with marriage equality in Utah, state officials on Tuesday formally made their request with the U.S. Supreme Court to halt same-sex marriages taking place in the state.
Attorneys for Utah officials — Gov. Gary Herbert (R) and newly sworn-in Attorney General Sean Reyes — filed the 26-page stay request with U.S. Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who’s responsible for the Tenth Circuit.
“As a result of the district court’s injunction, numerous same-sex marriages are now occurring every day in Utah,” the request states. “And each one is an affront not only to the interests of the state and its citizens in being able to define marriage through ordinary democratic channels…but also to this court’s unique role as final arbiter of the profoundly important constitutional question that is so carefully preserved in Windsor.”
Gay couples have started marrying in Utah since Dec. 20, when U.S. District Judge Robert Shelby ruled the 2004 state ban on same-sex marriage known as Amendment 3 was unconstitutional.
After appealing the decision to the U.S. Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, state officials have made several stay requests to halt the same-sex marriages. Following decisions from the district court and the Tenth Circuit to deny the stay requests, state officials swore to take up the matter with the Supreme Court.
Now that the stay request is before the high court, Sotomayor has the option of referring the request to all of her colleagues on the bench, who would provide the final word on whether a stay would be granted on same-sex marriages.
However, if Sotomayor goes it alone and decides against the stay, Utah officials may select any justice on the Supreme Court — such as a justice with an anti-gay reputation like U.S. Associate Justice Antonin Scalia — and make a final attempt to request a stay.
Doug NeJaime, who’s gay and law professor at the University of California, Irvine, said he expects Sotomayor to refer the request to the entire court, but isn’t able make a prediction on what will happen.
“Even justices sympathetic to the cause of same-sex marriage may think that a stay makes sense so as not to rush a substantive resolution by the court,” NeJaime said. “Last term we saw that the Court was hoping to let the issue keep moving forward without settling it, but the Utah case puts the issue back before the court very soon after Windsor and Hollingsworth. It’s unclear what will happen, but there are likely some justices hoping to hold off on deciding the big question.”
According to SCOTUSblog, Sotomayor has already requested a response to the Utah stay application by noon on Friday. Until that time, the court won’t take action on the stay.
Beefing up their arguments in their initial requests, Utah officials base their request for a stay, among other reasons, on the likelihood the Supreme Court will take up the marriage issue and on the Supreme Court’s ruling against Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act.
“And if DOMA’s non-recognition was an impermissible ‘federal intrusion on state power’ to define marriage, surely there is at least a good prospect that a majority of this court will ultimately hold the district court’s far more intrusive order and injunction valid, and in so doing vindicate the prerogative of Utah and its citizenry to retain the traditional definition of marriage if they so choose,” the request states.
Utah officials also express concern for same-sex couples marrying in the Utah in the event that a ruling from a higher court would abrogate their unions, saying a stay is needed to “avoid needless injuries to same-sex couples and their families that would follow.”
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, more than 1,225 marriage licenses were issued in Utah in the first six days of marriage equality between Dec. 20 and Dec 26. Of those, at least 74 percent were issued to same-sex couples.
Twice in the stay request, Utah officials cite a 2012 report from Mark Regnerus as evidence for why same-sex parents aren’t as fit biological opposite-sex parents. That report has been debunked for failing to control for error.
James Magleby, an attorney at Magleby & Greenwood PC representing same-sex couples in the case, chided Utah state officials for pursing the stay on same-sex marriages.
“It doesn’t have to be this way,” Magleby said. “The State of Utah should carefully consider its other options, in particular the fiscally responsible decision by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, to save his state from further legal expenditures and to put a divisive issue in the past, by deciding not to pursue an appeal from an analogous ruling.”
Utah state officials are calling on the Supreme Court to halt same-sex marriages as they’ve indicated they’re collaborating with outside counsel to the defend the marriage law. In a statement on its website last week, the attorney general’s office said it was putting off the stay request for a few days “[d]ue to the necessity of coordination with outside counsel.”
Consistent with what was reported earlier, the stay request indicates Monte Stewart, a private attorney with Stewart, Taylor & Morris and a history of advocacy against same-sex marriage, is listed as counsel of record for the state. A founder of Utah-based Marriage Law Foundation, Stewart has written numerous tracts in opposition to marriage equality, including a 2008 article in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy titled, “Marriage Facts.”
According to the Deseret News, the cost for Utah to hire outside counsel to defend the state’s marriage law is expected to reach nearly $2 million. Moreover, state lawmakers support the decision to defend the law at that cost. House Speaker Becky Lockhart reportedly said after House leaders heard the projected cost from Reyes, they “felt comfortable telling him, ‘Move forward with what you think is in the best interest of the state.'”
Utah sources familiar with the decision to hire outside counsel say state officials are doing so because the attorney general is too fresh on the job and because the state wants an expert on the subject matter to defend the marriage law.
Fred Sainz, the Human Rights Campaign’s vice president of communications, said in a statement last week that hiring outside counsel to defend the marriage law would be a bad move for Utah.
“Defending discrimination is indefensible,” Sainz said. “Defending discrimination while spending millions of taxpayer dollars to do it is beyond explanation. It is an affront to all Utahans that their hard-earned tax dollars – money that should be going into schools, roads or health programs – will instead be used to cement the state on the wrong side of history.”
Federal Government
Protesters say SAVE Act targets voters, transgender youth
Bill described as ‘Jim Crow 2.0’
Members of Congress, advocates, and people from across the country gathered outside the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday to protest proposed federal legislation that voting rights activists have deemed “Jim Crow 2.0.”
The Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act would amend the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 to require in-person proof of citizenship for anyone seeking to vote in U.S. elections.
President Donald Trump has also pushed for the proposed legislation to include a section that would ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors, even with parental consent, and prohibit trans people from participating in school or professional sports consistent with their gender identity rather than their sex assigned at birth.
In addition to changing voter registration requirements, the bill would limit acceptable forms of identification to documents such as a birth certificate or passport — records that the Brennan Center for Justice estimates more than 21 million Americans do not have — effectively restricting access to the ballot. It would also ban online voter registration, DMV voter registration efforts, and mail-in voter registration.
A 2021 investigation by the Associated Press found that fewer than 475 people voted illegally or improperly, a tiny fraction of the estimated 160 million Americans who voted in the 2020 election.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) spoke at the event.
“It will kick millions of American citizens off the rolls. And they don’t even require you to be told,” the highest-ranking Democrat in the Senate told protesters and reporters outside the Capitol. “If this law passes — and it won’t — you’re gonna show up in November … and they’ll say… sorry, you’re no longer on the voting rolls.”
He, like many other speakers, emphasized the bill in the context of American history, pointing to what he described as its racist roots and its impact on Black and brown Americans.
“I have called this act, over and over again, Jim Crow 2.0 … because they know it’s the truth.”
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) was one of the lawmakers leading opposition to the legislation and spoke at the rally.
“It’s not just voting rights that are on the line — our democracy is on the line,” the California lawmaker said. “It’s not a voter I.D. bill. It’s a bait and switch bill.”
He added historical context, noting the significance of voting rights legislation passed more than 60 years ago. In 1965, Alabama civil rights activists marched to protest barriers to voter registration. Alabama state troopers violently attacked peaceful demonstrators at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, using tear gas, clubs, and whips against more than 500 — mostly Black — protesters.
“61 years ago — not to the day — but this week, President Lyndon Johnson came to the Capitol and addressed a joint session of Congress in the wake of Bloody Sunday and pushed Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act,” Padilla said. “61 years later, Donald Trump and this Republican majority wants to take us backwards. We’re not gonna let that happen.”
U.S. Sen. Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.) also spoke, emphasizing that he views the effort as a Republican-led and Trump-backed attempt to restrict voting access, particularly among Black, brown, and predominantly Democratic communities.
“President Trump told Republicans when they were meeting behind closed doors that ‘The SAVE Act will guarantee Republicans win the midterms and ensure they do not lose an election for 50 years,’” Luján said. “The first time I think Donald Trump’s been honest … This voter suppression bill is only that. Taking away vote by mail? I hope my Republican colleagues from states that voted for Donald Trump or where vote by mail is popular have the courage and the backbone to stand up and say no to this nonsense, because their constituents are going to push back.”
U.S. Sen. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Del.) also spoke.
“Our Republican colleagues have already cut Medicaid, Medicare, people don’t know how they’re gonna be able to afford energy,” she said, providing context for the broader political moment. “We’re in the middle of a war that they can’t even get straight while we’re in it and don’t have a way to get out of it. And we are now faced with defending our democracy?”
She then showed the crowd something that she said has been with her throughout her political journey in Washington.
“I brought with me something that I carried on the day that I was sworn into the House of Representatives when I was elected in 2016, and I carried it with me on the day that I was sworn in as United States senator. And I also carried it with me when I was trapped up in the gallery on Jan. 6 and all I could think to do was pray … This document allowed my great great great grandfather, who had been enslaved in Georgia, to have the right to vote. We took this and turned it into a scarf. It is the returns of qualified voters and reconstruction code from 1867. This is my proof of what we’ve been through. This is also our inspiration.”
“I got to travel between the Edmund Pettus Bridge two times. And even as I thought about this moment, I recognized that while we wish we weren’t in it, while we don’t know why we’re in it, I do know we were made for it … So I came today to tell you that, um, just like the leader said, that he calls it Jim Crow 2.0. I call it Jim Crow 2.NO.”
Kelley Robinson, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy organization in the U.S., also spoke, highlighting the impact of the bill’s proposed provisions affecting trans people.
“This bill is not about saving America. This bill is about stealing an election. This bill is about suppressing voters,” Robinson said. “This bill not only tries to disenfranchise voters that deserve their right to vote, it also tries to criminalize trans kids and their families … It tries to criminalize doctors providing medically necessary care for our trans youth.”
The SAVE Act passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Feb. 11 but has not yet been considered in the U.S. Senate.
Obituary
Thomas A. Decker of Arlington dies at 73
Active in visiting AIDS patients, urging Congress to fight HIV
Thomas A. Decker Jr, of Arlington, Va., died March 3, 2026 following an extended illness, according to a statement released by his family. He was 73.
Born and raised in Canton, Ohio, Decker attended the University of Akron and earned his bachelor’s degree in political science. He then moved to the Washington, D.C. area and accepted a position with Beaver Press where he worked for 32 years, according to the statement.
He later worked in the Inova Juniper Program working with HIV/AIDS clients to assist them with support services and was active as a volunteer visiting AIDS patients in the hospital or advocating on Capitol Hill for HIV funding.
Tommy, as he was called by family, is survived by three sisters, a sister-in-law and two brothers-in-law: Carol Decker and Kathryn Kramer of West Newbury, MA, Margaret and Thomas Williams of Bluffton, SC, Mary Sue and Timothy Desiato of New Philadelphia, Ohio, Niece’s Trina and Chad Wedekind of Jacksonville Fl and great niece Isabella, Lindsay and Will Burgette of Dublin, Ohio and great nephews Colin and Luke and Nephews David Williams of Jacksonville, Florida, and Michael and Lucy Desiato of Dublin, Ohio and great nieces Lena and Stella. In accordance with Tom’s wishes, he will be buried at Calvary Cemetery in Massillon, Ohio.
District of Columbia
Gay candidate running for D.C. congressional delegate seat
Robert Matthews among 19 hoping to replace Eleanor Holmes Norton
Robert Matthews, a former director of the D.C. Child and Family Services Agency, is running in the city’s June 16 Democratic primary for the D.C. Congressional Delegate seat as an openly gay candidate, according to a statement released by his campaign to the Washington Blade.
Matthews is one of at least 19 candidates running to replace longtime D.C. Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), who announced earlier this year that she is not running for re-election.
Information about the candidates’ campaign financing compiled by the Federal Elections Commission, which oversees elections for federal candidates, shows that Matthews is one of only six of the candidates who have raised any money for their campaigns as of March 17.
Among those six, who political observers say have a shot at winning compared to the remaining 13, are D.C. Council members Brooke Pinto (D-Ward 2) and Robert White (D-At-Large). Both have longstanding records of support for LGBTQ rights and the community.
The FEC campaign finance records show Matthews was in fourth place regarding the money raised for his campaign, which was $49,078 as of March 17. The FEC records show Pinto’s campaign in first place with $843,496 raised, and White in third place with $230,399 raised.
The Matthews campaign statement released to the Blade says Matthews’s “commitment to the LGBTQ community is not a campaign position. It is the foundation of his life and his life’s work.”
The statement adds, “As the former director of D.C.’s Child and Family Services Agency, Robert led the District’s child welfare system with an explicit commitment to LGBTQ-affirming care.” It goes on to say, “He ensured that LGBTQ, trans, and nonbinary youth in foster care — among the most vulnerable young people in our city — were served with dignity, cultural humility, and genuine support.”
Among his priorities if elected as Congressional delegate, the statement says, would be “fighting to end homelessness among queer and trans seniors and youth,” opposing “federal roadblocks” to LGBTQ related health services, and defending D.C.’s budget and civil rights laws “from federal interference that directly threatens LGBTQ residents.”
The other three candidates who the FEC records show have raised campaign funds and observers say have a shot at winning are:
• Kinney Zalesne, former deputy national finance chair at the Democratic National Committee and an official at the U.S. Justice Department during the Clinton administration, whose campaign is in second place in fundraising with $593,885 raised.
• Gordon Chaffin, a former congressional staffer whose campaign has raised $17,950.
• Kelly Mikel Williams, a podcast host and candidate for the Congressional Delegate seat in 2022 and 2024, whose 2026 campaign has raised $3,094 as of March 17.
The Blade reached out to the Zalesne, Chaffin, and Williams campaigns to determine their position on LGBTQ issues. As of late Wednesday, the Zalesne campaign was the only one that responded.
“Kinney believes LGBTQ rights are fundamental civil rights and central to what makes Washington, D.C. a strong and vibrant community,” a statement sent by her campaign says. “At a time when LGBTQ people (especially transgender and nonbinary neighbors) are facing escalating political attacks across the country, she believes the District must continue to lead in protecting dignity, safety, and freedom for all,” it says.
The statement adds, “Throughout her career in government, business, and nonprofit leadership, Kinney has worked alongside LGBTQ and queer advocates and leaders. She is committed to maintaining an active partnership with the community to make sure LGBTQ voices remain central to the District’s future.”
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