WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court announced Friday that it will decide a historic question about whether the Constitution requires that same-sex couples be allowed to marry no matter where they live, and whether states are free to limit wedlock to its traditional definition as a union only between a man and a woman.
The court accepted cases from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, where restrictions about same-sex marriage were upheld by an appeals court in Cincinnati two months ago.
The high court will hold 2½ hours of oral arguments in April and decide the issue by the time the current term ends in June.
The justices ordered that the parties to the cases address two questions in their legal briefs: whether the Constitution requires states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and whether states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states where they are legal.
Advocates have called same-sex marriage the modern era’s most pressing civil rights issue. The court’s action could mark the culmination of an unprecedented upheaval in public opinion and the nation’s jurisprudence.
“We are thrilled the court will finally decide this issue,” said James Esseks, director of the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender & HIV Project. “The country is ready for a national solution that treats lesbian and gay couples fairly.”
Those on both sides of the issue agreed that the time had come for the Supreme Court to step in and settle the issue.
“It is time for the 50 million Americans who stood for marriage in 30 states to have their day in court,” said Brian Brown, president of the National Organization for Marriage, which opposes same-sex marriage. He said his group expects “an eventual victory for the democratic process, religious liberty and the cherished institution of marriage, which forms the very bedrock of our society.”
The questions raised in the cases that the court will consider this spring were left open in 2013 when the justices last confronted the issue of same-sex marriage.
A slim majority said at the time that a key portion of the federal Defense of Marriage Act — withholding recognition of same-sex marriages — was unconstitutional and in a separate case allowed same-sex marriages to resume in California.
Since then, courts across the nation — with the notable exception of the Cincinnati appeals court — have struck down state prohibitions on same-sex marriage, many of them passed by voters in referendums.
When the Supreme Court declined to review a clutch of those decisions in October, same-sex marriage proliferated across the country.
Couples may marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia. Three in four same-sex couples live in a state where they are allowed to wed, according to estimates by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
After the court’s announcement Friday afternoon, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Obama administration will file a friend-of-the-court brief asking the justices “to make marriage equality a reality for all Americans.”
The Michigan case involves the issuance of marriage licenses to same-sex couples. The cases from Tennessee and Ohio concern whether states must recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states where such unions are legal. And Kentucky offers cases that touch on both licensing and recognition.
In the 2013 DOMA case, U.S. vs. Windsor, the decision written by Justice Anthony Kennedy said the federal government could not refuse to recognize or provide benefits to people in same-sex marriages that were conducted in states where they were legal.
Dozens of lower-court judges have read Kennedy’s opinion to mean that state bans violate constitutional rights as well. Chief Justice John G. Roberts wrote separately in the Windsor case to point out that the decision did not pass judgment on state bans.
