Soon after the D.C. law allowing same-sex marriage went into effect, a challenge to the law continued to press on, despite Congress or the U.S. Supreme Court from taking any action to prevent the new law from taking effect.

The National Organization for Marriage is seeking a challenge to the D.C. marriage law in an effort to put the issue on the ballot for voters in the District to decide on the issue, not the city council, taking advantage of a section in the D.C. Charter that allows citizens to gather signatures to place the issue on the ballot. The D.C. Charter allows for two types of citizen-backed measures: a referendum, which applies only to a bill that has passed the council and has yet to go into effect, and an initiative, which can appear on the ballot at any time.  The organization already appealed to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts who as chief justice oversees D.C. matters; Roberts noted that since Congress and the Court did not take action to stop the law from taking effect the referendum process would not apply but that “the D.C. Court of Appeals will have the chance to consider the relevant legal questions on their merits, and petitioners will have the right to challenge any adverse decision through a petition for certiorari in this Court at the appropriate time.”

However, petitioners from the Alliance Defense Fund and Stand for Marriage D.C. already filed a lawsuit and were pursuing a ballot initiative but were denied by the D.C. Board of Elections and by various courts, which upheld the board’s stance that such an initiative would “authorize discrimination” against homosexuals, a violation of the D.C. Charter and Human Rights Act.  In a ruling earlier this year, D.C. Court of Appeals Judge Judith Macaluso stated, “The fact that the proposed initiative, if passed, would violate the Human Rights Act provides an independent basis for upholding the Board’s decision: the initiative runs afoul of an implied exclusion barring provisions that violates the state’s law,” she ruled.  Following the ruling of Judge Macaluso, Chief Justice John Roberts noted to petitioners of the D.C. marriage law that “It has been the practice of the Court to defer to the decisions of the courts of the District of Columbia on matters of exclusively local concern.”