Fairfax officials prep for potential of same-sex marriages

Like everyone else, Fairfax court officials spent last week in wait-and-wonder mode, anticipating word on whether the U.S. Supreme Court would halt same-sex marriages before they even begin in Virginia.

“We of course are waiting for the parties to exhaust their federal remedies,” Gerarda Culipher, chief deputy clerk of the Fairfax County Circuit Court, told the Sun Gazette Aug. 15.

Until then, “the law of Virginia hasn’t changed,” Culipher said – and no marriage licenses to same-sex couples would be issued unless and until courts say so.

The 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals last week refused to put on hold its order mandating acceptance of same-sex marriages in the jurisdictions under its authority: Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and South Carolina. Opponents of the ruling appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court to delay implementation of the ruling. (See the Web site at www.insidenova.com/news/fairfax for updates.)

Virginia voters in 2006 approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage as exclusively between one man and one woman. Same-sex couples, who number an estimated 14,200 in Virginia, have not been eligible for marriage licenses, and out-of-state marriages between same-sex couples are not recognized by Virginia.

Culipher said that same-sex couples have come to the Fairfax clerk’s office, and “we shared the law with them.”

Fairfax County issues the largest number of marriage licenses in the commonwealth; in 2012, the last year for which full records are available, there were 5,069 issued in Fairfax, compared to 4,721 in Virginia Beach and 3,055 in Arlington, according to state figures.

The Arlington Circuit Court clerk’s office several years ago began accepting applications from same-sex couples in a symbolic move, since they could not be processed.

Arlington Clerk of Court Paul Ferguson (D) estimates that his office could see the number of annual applications for marriage licenses rise to as much as 5,000 if same-sex nuptials are approved.

(Arlington gets a disproportionately higher number of applicants than its population, in part because its clerk’s office is located near a Metro station; licenses issued in one Virginia locality are valid for ceremonies throughout the commonwealth.)

Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring (D), who came into office in January, declined to defend the Virginia constitutional provision banning same-sex marriages. But he has supported a stay of the circuit-court ruling, to give the Supreme Court time to evaluate conflicting rulings on the matter from lower courts across the nation.

The request for a stay of the 4th Circuit’s order was made by Prince William County Clerk of the Circuit Court Michele McQuigg (R), who has been defending the commonwealth’s marriage ban in the absence of Herring.

In court filings, McQuigg said there would be “needless chaos and uncertainty” if a patchwork of lower-court rulings took hold before the Supreme Court had a chance to decide the issue on a national basis.

The decision rests with Chief Justice John Roberts, who has jurisdiction over emergency appeals from the 4th Circuit. Roberts could act unilaterally or could ask his colleagues to weigh in before responding.