Tanco v. Haslam

Tanco v. Haslam
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued April 28, 2015
Full case name	Valeria Tanco and Sophie Jesty, Ijpe DeKoe and Thomas Kostura, and Johno Espejo and Matthew Mansell v. William Edward "Bill" Haslam, as Governor of the State of Tennessee, in his official capacity; Larry Martin, as Commissioner of the Department of Finance and Administration, in his official capacity, and Robert Cooper, as Attorney General & Reporter of the State of Tennessee, in his official capacity
Related cases	Bourke v. Beshear, DeBoer v. Snyder, Obergefell v. Hodges, Love v. Beshear.
Case history
Prior	Tanco v. Haslam, 7 F. Supp. 3d 759 (M.D. Tenn. 2014); stay granted, No. 14-5297 (6th Cir. Apr. 25, 2014); reversed sub. nom., DeBoer v. Snyder, 772 F.3d 388 (6th Cir. 2014); cert. granted, 135 S. Ct. 1040 (2015).
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Antonin Scalia · Anthony Kennedy Clarence Thomas · Ruth Bader Ginsburg Stephen Breyer · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Tanco v. Haslam was the lead case in the dispute of same-sex marriage in Tennessee. A U.S. District Court granted a preliminary injunction requiring the state to recognize the marriages of the plaintiffs, three same-sex couples.^[1] The court found the equal protection analysis used in Bourke v. Beshear, a case dealing with a comparable Kentucky statute "especially persuasive."^[2] On April 25, 2014, that injunction was stayed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Tanco was appealed to the Sixth Circuit, which reversed the district court and upheld Tennessee's refusal to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions on November 6.

On January 16, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court consolidated this case with three others and agreed to review the case. Oral arguments were heard on April 28, 2015.^[3][4]