It wasn’t really unexpected that the Supreme Court would put a stay on the federal court ruling in the case of marriage equality in Utah.  In fact, it was more of a surprise that there wasn’t one automatically put in place when the ruling came down three weeks ago.

That’s because — and this is my non-law-student understanding — the court should have been asked as a matter of course to put a hold on their ruling while awaiting an appeal, but the Attorney General’s office in Utah, which has been in a turmoil because of internal matters, just plain forgot to file the motion for the stay before the court issued its ruling.  The court can’t issue a stay without a motion from one of the parties to the suit.  Since there was no motion for the stay, the ruling went into effect, and hundreds of same-sex couples in Utah got married.  Oops.

Now the question is what happens to all those marriages?  Are they still valid?  Presumably so since there was no legal barrier to them at the time they took place, and there was no intent to defraud the state.  It’s going to make it that much harder for the appeals court, and eventually the Supreme Court, to invalidate them.  In other words, you can’t unring those wedding bells.