The anticipated same-sex marriage licenses are the result of a federal judge’s ruling in Tallahassee that the state’s constitutional and legislative bans violate the federal constitution. A stay of that federal ruling will expire on Tuesday, opening the gates to same-sex marriages in Florida.
In the meantime, the Shaws’ divorce case is pending before the 2nd District Court of Appeal. The couple are seeking to overturn a decision in May by Hillsborough Circuit Judge Laurel M. Lee that she could not dissolve a marriage that legally does not exist in the state of Florida.Lawyers said they’re waiting for the appellate court to schedule oral arguments in the Shaw divorce case.
But last week, another state appellate court, the 3rd District Court of Appeal in South Florida, issued a ruling denying a same-sex divorce. In that case, the couple married in Iowa in 2009 and later moved to Florida. The women, Sarah Oliver and Heather Ann Stufflebeam, filed for divorce in Miami-Dade, but were denied.
Do you think the 2nd Amendment will be destroyed by the Biden Administration?(2)
That couple appealed but did not challenge the constitutionality of the state’s same-sex marriage bans. Instead, they argued that the law applied to marriages, not divorces. The 3rd DCA rejected that argument and denied the divorce in an opinion issued on Dec. 24.
“Simply stated,” the appellate court wrote, “one cannot dissolve a marriage where there is not a marriage to dissolve.” Granting a divorce, the court said, “concedes that a valid marriage in fact exists.”
That ruling came exactly a week after a Broward Circuit judge granted another same-sex couple a divorce.Unlike the Miami-Dade couple, the Shaws in Tampa are challenging the constitutionality of the state bans.
Brett Rahall, who is representing Mariama Shaw, said they also included the same argument about the law not applying to divorces but felt that claim was their weakest point.
The 3rd DCA ruling is “kind of messed up, Rahall said. And it’s made the legal status “even more muddy.”
“The state could conceivably take the position that there will be these marriage licenses – we’re just not going to recognize them,” Cordover said.
At the same time, the Tallahassee federal judge’s rulings are “very helpful to our case,” Rahall said. “I still think were ultimately going to prevail. It’s just, time-wise, I don’t know when that’s going to be.”
The Shaws worked out their differences through a process known as collaborative divorce. They are seeking only a legal ruling that their marriage has ended.The 3rd DCA ruling in the Oliver-Stufflebeam case did say same-sex couples can have their marriages annulled in Florida, but Cordover said that option is “insulting” because it requires couples to say their marriage was never legally valid.
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident.