Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange filed court papers urging a federal judge in Mobile to reject a bid to add class-action status to an ongoing same-sex marriage case, arguing the move would create unnecessary chaos ahead of a pending U.S. Supreme Court ruling.
In a filing submitted to the U.S. District Court in Mobile, Strange argued that a “fundamental redefinition of marriage in Alabama without the benefit of full appellate review would lead to chaos, confusion, and additional litigation” that could be avoided if the court simply paused its orders until the nation’s highest court weighed in. The filing came in response to a motion filed days earlier by civil rights organizations seeking to expand the case to cover a broader class of plaintiffs.
Strange contended that Alabama’s probate judges should be sued individually rather than as a group, and that the proposed class of “all persons in Alabama who wish to obtain a marriage license in order to marry a person of the same sex” was too vague to meet the legal standard for class certification. “A basic tenet of class litigation is that one should be able to identify who is, and who is not, a member of the class,” the filing stated.
The dispute is the latest turn in a legal saga that has centered heavily on Mobile County. The Alabama Supreme Court had recently ordered the state’s probate judges to stop issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, a directive that put Mobile County Probate Judge Don Davis in a difficult position. Davis was told to inform the court whether he considered himself bound by an earlier federal order requiring him to issue the licenses, and he requested an extension to respond.
That federal order traced back to a ruling by U.S. District Judge Callie V.S. “Ginny” Granade, who in February directed Davis to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. His office started doing so that same afternoon, just days after Granade’s broader ruling striking down Alabama’s ban on same-sex marriage had already led other counties to issue licenses statewide.
The case has also touched on a related adoption dispute. Granade postponed a hearing on a request to force Davis to process an adoption petition filed by Cari Searcy, a plaintiff who had won an earlier lawsuit challenging Alabama’s marriage ban. Davis’ attorney had asked the judge to dismiss that adoption case as premature. Searcy’s attorney, David Kennedy, pushed back on Strange’s characterization of the legal situation, saying Granade’s rulings had been clear and consistent throughout. He suggested any confusion stemmed instead from state officials in Montgomery.
The Mobile federal court remained the epicenter of Alabama’s same-sex marriage litigation through the winter of 2015, with rulings from Granade’s courtroom shaping how probate offices across the state, including Mobile County, handled marriage license requests in the months before the Supreme Court’s nationwide ruling later that year.