Roberta Kaplan, the lawyer who successfully fought Edie Windsor's DOMA case with the ACLU before the Supreme Court, filed a motion to intervene in an ACLU case challenging Ohio's gay marriage ban several weeks ago. On Friday, the ACLU told the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to deny her intervention, the Washington Blade reports:
In a filing Friday before the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, the American Civil Liberties Union — along with the ACLU of Ohio and private attorneys at Gerhardstein & Branch — expressed opposition to Roberta Kaplan’s intervention in a case seeking recognition of same-sex marriages in Ohio for the purposes of death certificates.
The 16-page brief argues that Kaplan should be denied intervention in the Ohio case — in which she sought entry on behalf of Equality Ohio and four same-sex couples — on the basis that she wants to enter the case at too late a stage and is making arguments already stated by plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
“Plaintiffs-Appellees have the utmost respect for Equality Ohio and the four unmarried couples and their counsel and the important interests they represent,” the brief states. “However, Plaintiffs-Appellees should be entitled to continue to litigate the case that they initiated in July of last year without the disruption and prejudice that would flow from new claims and parties at this late stage.”
The ACLU also expressed displeasure at Kaplan's timing, months after the case was filed and briefings were scheduled.
Kaplan refused to respond to the Blade when asked, saying she would be filing her response with the court.
More at the Blade...
The case is an appeal of a ruling by Judge Timothy Black brought by John Arthur and Jim Obergfell, who flew to Maryland from Ohio last year so they could marry on the airport tarmac before Arthur's ALS, a progressive neurological disease that robs patients of their ability to walk, talk and eventually breathe, became too difficult.
Arthur died in October.
Ohio's attorney general appealed Black's ruling in January, bringing the case before the Sixth Circuit.
