That would leave it to Gov. Tom Corbett to defend the 1996 state law that defines marriages as a civil contract in which a man and a woman take each other as husband and wife, the Associated Press says.
UPDATE: Pa. attorney general: I won't defend the ban on same-sex marriage
Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane is expected to announce this morning she won't defend a federal lawsuit challenging the state's ban on same-sex marriage, the Philadelphia Daily news is reporting, citing sources.
Kane and Gov. Tom Corbett are named in the lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union that seeks to overturn a 1996 state law that defines marriage as a civil contract in which a man and a woman take each other as husband and wife, the Associated Press said. Two local residents are among the 21 plaintiffs.
Kane is scheduled to make an announcement this morning at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, according to published reports. Kane said during her campaign last year that she believes gay couples should be able to marry, the AP said.
Pennsylvania law says it is the attorney general’s duty to defend the constitutionality of state laws. But it also says the attorney general may allow lawyers for the governor’s office or executive branch agencies to defend a lawsuit if it is more efficient or in the state’s best interests, the AP reports.
That means Corbett could end up defending the law in Pennsylvania, where polls show the public is increasingly accepting of the concept of same-sex marriage, the AP said. Corbett’s office declined to comment Wednesday on whether he will defend the law.
Corbett, who faces a run for re-election next year with weak job approval polling numbers, will be in a tricky political situation, Christopher Borick, a pollster and political science professor at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, told the AP.
“Being forced to fight for a state policy that is going counter to a majority of what Pennsylvanians think is not necessarily the place you want to be in an election year,” Borick said.
The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III, a Republican and an appointee of former President George W. Bush who is perhaps best known for his handling of one of the biggest courtroom clashes between faith and evolution since the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial, the AP said.
In that 2005 decision, Jones barred the Dover Area School District in southern Pennsylvania from teaching “intelligent design” in biology class and said its first-in-the-nation decision to insert it into the science curriculum violated the constitutional separation of church and state, the AP said. He called it “a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory.”