GRAND RAPIDS, MI – A same-sex couple is asking a federal court to order Michigan to recognize their out-of-state marriage immediately as one man’s fight with brain cancer worsens.
East Grand Rapids couple Bruce Morgan and Brian Merucci married in 2013 in New York, where same-sex marriage is legal. They filed a lawsuit against Snyder in U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids last spring after their marriage was not recognized in Kent County.
U.S. District Judge Gordon Quist ordered a stay in the case pending the U.S. Supreme Court decision on Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban.
Morgan was diagnosed in 2011 with inoperable brain cancer that is now progressing, and the couple can’t afford to wait for Supreme Court’s ruling, documents state.
In a filing, the couple said the court’s rationale for staying the case is no longer relevant since Gov. Rick Snyder earlier this year decided not to appeal a federal injunction requiring the state recognize marriage licenses issued to same-sex couples on March 22, 2014.
Snyder in February said that the state would extend state marriage benefits to the 300 same-sex couples who married the one day it was legal.
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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in those cases on April 28 and could issue a nationwide ruling on marriage equality by June.
