A Nebraska prison inmate and his transgendered partner have lost another round in their legal fight to be able to visit each other and get married.
A federal judge has rejected the couple’s lawsuit challenging a Nebraska constitutional amendment that defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, reported the Lincoln Journal Star.
The prisoner, Harold Wilson, and Gracy Sedlak also had a state lawsuit that raised the same claims thrown out because they failed to pay an $82 court fee.
Sedlak is a former inmate who previously identified as a man and used the name John Jirovsky. Wilson, 57, is serving a 56- to 170-year prison sentence on attempted murder, kidnapping and sexual assault charges from Dawson County. He went to prison in 1986.
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Sedlak, 27, can’t visit Wilson now because of a Nebraska Department of Correctional Services rule that puts a three-year waiting period on former inmates visiting prisons. Sedlak was released from prison in 2011.
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Wilson and Sedlak argued that their civil rights are being violated because they can’t marry who they want.
Senior U.S. District Judge Richard Kopf said a previous ruling by the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals upheld Nebraska’s marriage amendment, so the lawsuit couldn’t proceed.
That earlier appellate ruling said Nebraska had legitimate reasons for using a traditional definition for marriage because the state wanted to encourage heterosexual couples to bear and raise children in committed marriages.
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