Soon, the Supreme Court will hand down hotly anticipated verdicts on two cases related to gay marriage: a challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples legally married in their states, and a challenge to California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage in that state based on a November 2008 ballot initiative. The decisions are likely to come either Thursday or next Monday, though the court could delay them further.
Based on lower courts' rulings and the justices' questions during oral arguments in March, gay-marriage advocates are cautiously optimistic, particularly where DOMA is concerned. The Prop 8 case was argued by the bipartisan team of Theodore Olson and David Boies, the Republican and Democrat superlawyers who opposed one another in Bush v. Gore. On Tuesday, at an event sponsored by the center-left think tank Third Way, Boies discussed the many outcomes for that case.
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