CHARLESTON, S.C. — South Carolina Attorney General Alan Wilson says he will appeal a federal judge’s ruling tossing out the state’s ban on same-sex marriages.
U.S. District Judge Richard Gergel, ruling Wednesday in the case of a couple from Charleston suing to be married, found South Carolina’s state constitutional ban “invalid as a matter of law.”
But Wilson says the decision was no surprise and that he has an obligation to defend the state’s laws. He says he will appeal immediately to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia.
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That court has already found a similar ban against same-sex marriages in Virginia unconstitutional. All the states in the circuit, with the exception of South Carolina, now permit same-sex marriages.
But Wilson says South Carolina’s marriage laws are not identical to those in other states.
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