O'Kelley Reversed; Gay Marriage Amendment Upheld

The Georgia Supreme Court reversed the trial court in O'Kelley in a short opinion released today, which is available at this link.

The Court provided no express holding regarding the scope of the amendment (i.e. whether the amendment prohibits same-sex unions from having any of the benefits of marriage, as it might appear from the text, or whether it simply means that any union that grants all of the same benefits as marriage is not recognized, as the state contended at oral argument), but that may be implicit in the court's holding that the purpose of the amendment is not to invalidate same-sex relationships but merely to "reserv[e] marriage and its attendant benefits to unions of man and woman."