A second same-sex couple with ties to Mobile has won a federal court ruling allowing them to marry in Alabama, just days after a landmark decision struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage. U.S. District Judge Callie “Ginny” Granade ruled in favor of James Strawser and John Humphrey, granting them the same relief she had extended earlier in a separate case involving another Mobile-area couple.
Strawser and Humphrey filed their federal lawsuit in September, well before Granade’s initial ruling declaring Alabama’s same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional. Humphrey said he had not been overly confident when they filed, given Alabama’s conservative political leanings and the fact that the couple pursued the case without a formal legal team of their own.
Humphrey said he was ecstatically pleased after the ruling and had not realized it would come so soon.
Granade’s ruling in the Strawser and Humphrey case mirrored her earlier decision, though she noted the facts differed slightly. In the earlier case, Alabama had refused to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in another state. In this case, the state had refused to issue Strawser and Humphrey a marriage license in Alabama in the first place. Granade found that the same constitutional reasoning applied either way.
As she had done previously, Granade delayed her ruling from taking effect until Feb. 9, giving the state time to seek intervention from the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals while the U.S. Supreme Court prepared to take up the broader same-sex marriage question later that year. The Alabama Attorney General’s Office said it would appeal.
Strawser and Humphrey said they planned to head to the Mobile County Probate Court on Feb. 9 to apply for their marriage license. The two had met online and eventually began living together in Mobile after Humphrey relocated from Gulfport. Strawser, originally from Columbus, Ohio, said he moved to the Mobile area roughly a decade earlier to help care for his ailing mother.
The ruling made Mobile a focal point in Alabama’s broader legal fight over same-sex marriage, as multiple couples with local ties pursued cases in the months leading up to the U.S. Supreme Court’s eventual nationwide ruling on the issue.