WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Without issuing a single ruling, the Supreme Court this week paved the way for gay marriage in several U.S. states, let tough new voting laws go ahead in two other states and blocked one in another, showing how the court can wield power even when not formally deciding cases.
The trend of the court resolving hot-button issues without issuing lengthy written rulings will persist in coming days as the court has to respond to emergency requests over a strict new abortion law in Texas and a gay marriage ban in Idaho.
“It’s a confluence of events” that so many hotly contested legal battles have come before the court at the same time, said John Elwood, a regular Supreme Court lawyer.
Refusing to hear a case is not unusual for the Supreme Court. It agrees to hear less than 1 percent of the petitions filed seeking its consideration. Each one of those refusals has consequences for the parties involved.
But it is rare for the rejection of an appeal to have the kind of wide impact the ones on gay marriage did. When it rejected seven different appeals on Monday, the court effectively green-lighted gay marriage in 11 states that previously banned it. In one swoop, the number of states where gay marriage is legal, or soon will be, shot to 30 from 19.
The court’s refusal to hear the gay marriage cases was even more surprising because litigants on both sides asked the justices to take up the issue. That is unusual.
The court has in the past shown reluctance to take up major legal questions that divide the nation. For instance, it has declined several times in the past 18 months to decide whether the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on the right to bear arms extends to individuals carrying a firearm outside their homes.
But the court also has tackled other major issues recently, including gay marriage. The appeals of court rulings striking down gay marriage bans that the court declined to hear on Monday were themselves prompted by a June 2013 Supreme Court ruling striking down part of a federal law that restricted the definition of marriage to heterosexual couples.
The voting cases the court has acted on in recent days came included emergency requests from state officials in Ohio and North Carolina seeking to block lower court rulings in favor of civil rights groups. The states wanted the laws in effect for November’s elections.
In the Ohio case, the court let new curbs on early voting move forward. In North Carolina, new restrictions on same-day registration and provisional voting for voters casting ballots outside their normal precincts will go into effect as a result of the court’s action. The court was divided in both cases, with conservatives in the majority and liberals dissenting.
In a third case, the court on Thursday blocked a new Wisconsin voter identification law. On that occasion, conservative justices objected.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley- Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh, Alden Bentley and Peter Cooney)
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