Florida To Legally Married Same-Sex Couple: Change Your Name Or Lose Your Driver's Licenses

After granting driver's licenses to a same-sex couple who legally married out-of-state, the State of Florida is now threatening them to change their names or lose their licenses.

Scott and Daniel Wall-Desousa have been together for over ten years and traveled to New York City to marry. Upon returning home to Florida, they attempted to change their legal documents, from Social Security cards to drivers' licenses, to reflect their new legal names, as many other people do after marrying.

Daniel went to a local Florida DMV and told WFTV in October it was "no hassle." But his husband Scott spent several months and had to travel to several different locations before getting a clerk to make the change, despite the fact that his name had legally changed.

Ultimately, they both had licenses reflecting their legal names – names the federal government recognizes.

Last month, Scott told the local news channel an Orlando DMV clerk "said as of July of this year there have been changes in our policy and here is your new name."

The DMV would not confirm a change in policy, but Scott understood it to be a ‘don't ask, don't tell’ approach by the DMV — something made easier since marriage licenses aren't stamped with the same-sex label.
"Separate but equal is a dangerous thing," Scott Wall-Desousa said.

Little did Scott Wall-Desousa know just how right he was about to be.
Just days after their story aired on WFTV, the couple received a threatening letter from the Florida DMV: Change your last name or lose your licenses.

"It informs me and notifies me that my driving privileges will be canceled indefinitely as of Nov. 22," Daniel Wall-Desousa told WFTV reporters. "It is a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy, and I guess we have been told, 'Here is the repercussion,'" Scott Wall-Desousa added.

Meanwhile, all the couple's legal documents – state and federal, and their work-related documents and even work IDs – have already been changed to their legal names.

"Everything has been changed to my benefits, to my Florida pension. How does one undo all that," Daniel asks.

WFTV reports the Wall-Desousas "plan to file a lawsuit because they feel they are being targeted."

Ironically, the Florida DMV letter was addressed to their legal, married name: Wall-Desousa.

 

Judge strikes down South Carolina same-sex marriage ban

BRUCE SMITH | Associated Press

CHARLESTON, S.C. — A federal judge on Wednesday struck down South Carolina’s same-sex marriage ban as unconstitutional, opening the door to such marriages but also giving the state a week to appeal. The attorney general said he would do so immediately.

U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel, ruling in the case of a same-sex couple from Charleston who sued to be married, found South Carolina’s state constitutional ban “invalid as a matter of law.”

He also blocked any state official from interfering with the plaintiffs’ rights to be married. But Gergel wrote that order would not take effect until noon Nov. 20, allowing Attorney General Alan Wilson a chance to appeal to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia.

“Today’s ruling comes as no surprise and does not change the constitutional obligation of this office to defend South Carolina law, including, but not necessarily limited to, appeal to the 4th Circuit,” Wilson said in a statement.

He noted the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati recently upheld gay marriage bans in four other states, and the issue could end up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

But the 4th Circuit already has struck down Virginia’s gay marriage ban, a ruling that applied to other states in the circuit. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of that case last month and South Carolina is the only state in the circuit that has refused to allow such marriages.

Gergel wrote that the 4th Circuit decision is precedent in South Carolina and the court has “recognized a fundamental right of same-sex couples to marry and power of the federal courts to address and vindicate that right.”

Derek Black, who teaches constitutional law at the University of South Carolina School of Law, said “the prospects are zero” that Wilson will be able to get a stay of Gergel’s ruling at the 4th Circuit.

“If you thought of the attorney general here and the attorney generals in the 6th Circuit as football teams, they are down about 10 touchdowns with 10 seconds left,” Black said. “You can’t score 10 touchdowns in 10 seconds.”

The South Carolina case was brought by Colleen Condon and Nichols Bleckley, who applied for a same-sex marriage license in Charleston County last month.

But before it could be issued, the state Supreme Court blocked issuing licenses until a federal court in Columbia ruled in another gay marriage challenge. In that case, a couple wants the state to recognize their same-sex marriage performed in Washington, D.C.

Condon and Bleckley sued in federal court on Oct. 15 after the state Supreme Court action.
“We’re excited and relieved and pleased that the federal court issued its ruling striking down this discriminatory law,” said Beth Littrell, an attorney for Lamda Legal, a national civil rights law firm that assisted Condon and Bleckley in their lawsuit.

“It would have been nice if it had come earlier, but in the scheme of the amount of time most federal lawsuits take this is a very quick decision and so we are happy,” she added.

6th Circuit Court upholds same-sex marriage bans in four states

Ruling creates a divide among federal appeals courts, increasing the likelihood the U.S. Supreme Court will now take up the issue

 

DAN SEWELL | Associated Press

CINCINNATI — The expanding legal acceptance of same-sex marriage in the United States hit a roadblock on Thursday when a federal appeals court panel upheld anti-gay marriage laws in four states, making it more likely that the Supreme Court will take up the issue.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that heard arguments on gay marriage bans or restrictions in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee on Aug. 6 split 2-1, with Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton writing the majority opinion for himself and a fellow George W. Bush appointee, while a Bill Clinton appointee disagreed.

The ruling concluded that states have the right to set rules for marriage and that such change as expanding a definition of marriage that dates “back to the earliest days of human history” is better done through political processes.

“When the courts do not let the people resolve new social issues like this one, they perpetuate the idea that the heroes in these change events are judges and lawyers,” Sutton wrote, adding that it’s better to have change “in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way.”

Cincinnati attorney Al Gerhardstein, who represented gay plaintiffs in two cases in which he gained lower-court victories, said he will appeal to the Supreme Court.

“We’re disappointed in the ruling. … We believe the U.S. District Court and the dissent on the three-judge panel got it right,” he said.

Attorneys could seek a review of the panel’s decision by the full circuit court, but with mostly Republican-appointed judges they likely will try to move the issue directly on to the Supreme Court, seeking a definitive ruling.

The dissenting judge suggested that might have been the goal of Sutton and Judge Deborah Cook in their ruling.

“Because the correct result is so obvious, one is tempted to speculate that the majority has purposefully taken the contrary position to create the circuit split,” Judge Martha Craig Daugherty wrote, saying getting the case to the Supreme Court would put “an end to the uncertainty of status and the interstate chaos that the current discrepancy in state laws threaten.”

The president of pro-gay marriage group Freedom to Marry, Evan Wolfson, blasted the ruling as “on the wrong side of history.”

He called it “completely out of step with the Supreme Court’s clear signal last month, out of step with the constitutional command as recognized by nearly every state and federal court in the past year, and out of step with the majority of the American people.”

“This anomalous ruling won’t stand the test of time or appeal,” he said in a statement.
In October, the Supreme Court surprisingly turned away appeals from five states seeking to uphold their marriage bans, even with the gay couples who won in the lower courts joining with the states to ask for high court review.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in the weeks following the court’s denial of those appeals that the lack of a split in the appellate courts made Supreme Court review of the issue unnecessary.

CINCINNATI — The expanding legal acceptance of same-sex marriage in the United States hit a roadblock on Thursday when a federal appeals court panel upheld anti-gay marriage laws in four states, making it more likely that the Supreme Court will take up the issue.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel that heard arguments on gay marriage bans or restrictions in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee on Aug. 6 split 2-1, with Circuit Judge Jeffrey Sutton writing the majority opinion for himself and a fellow George W. Bush appointee, while a Bill Clinton appointee disagreed.

The ruling concluded that states have the right to set rules for marriage and that such change as expanding a definition of marriage that dates “back to the earliest days of human history” is better done through political processes.

“When the courts do not let the people resolve new social issues like this one, they perpetuate the idea that the heroes in these change events are judges and lawyers,” Sutton wrote, adding that it’s better to have change “in which the people, gay and straight alike, become the heroes of their own stories by meeting each other not as adversaries in a court system but as fellow citizens seeking to resolve a new social issue in a fair-minded way.”

Cincinnati attorney Al Gerhardstein, who represented gay plaintiffs in two cases in which he gained lower-court victories, said he will appeal to the Supreme Court.

“We’re disappointed in the ruling. … We believe the U.S. District Court and the dissent on the three-judge panel got it right,” he said.

Attorneys could seek a review of the panel’s decision by the full circuit court, but with mostly Republican-appointed judges they likely will try to move the issue directly on to the Supreme Court, seeking a definitive ruling.

The dissenting judge suggested that might have been the goal of Sutton and Judge Deborah Cook in their ruling.

“Because the correct result is so obvious, one is tempted to speculate that the majority has purposefully taken the contrary position to create the circuit split,” Judge Martha Craig Daugherty wrote, saying getting the case to the Supreme Court would put “an end to the uncertainty of status and the interstate chaos that the current discrepancy in state laws threaten.”

The president of pro-gay marriage group Freedom to Marry, Evan Wolfson, blasted the ruling as “on the wrong side of history.”

He called it “completely out of step with the Supreme Court’s clear signal last month, out of step with the constitutional command as recognized by nearly every state and federal court in the past year, and out of step with the majority of the American people.”

“This anomalous ruling won’t stand the test of time or appeal,” he said in a statement.
In October, the Supreme Court surprisingly turned away appeals from five states seeking to uphold their marriage bans, even with the gay couples who won in the lower courts joining with the states to ask for high court review.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in the weeks following the court’s denial of those appeals that the lack of a split in the appellate courts made Supreme Court review of the issue unnecessary.