Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette's office has delivered the state's defense of its same-sex marriage ban to the US Supreme Court.
The court will hear arguments in the case next month.
The Michigan Public Radio Network’s Rick Pluta has more.
The state’s 59-page brief focuses largely on states’ rights. The attorney general argues the case is not specifically about marriage, but who gets to decide the question. The brief says the US Constitution is silent on the issue, so the decision on defining who can get married is left to states or their voters. Michigan voters approved the ban in 2004.
A lesbian couple is challenging the ban. They say it violates their equal protection rights and the equal protections rights of the children they are raising together but cannot jointly adopt.