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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Eye On Boise

Lead plaintiff: ‘Burden is on the state to prove that our marriages are detrimental to anyone, and they can’t’

“As hard and as heart wrenching as this ‘temporary stay’ is for all those people who were planning to finally get married tomorrow, this may be the best thing that the court could have done,” Sue Latta, the lead plaintiff in Idaho’s same-sex marriage court case, told Eye on Boise this afternoon. “If they had had a knee-jerk reaction, we probably would have gotten a ‘stay pending appeal,’ which will take many months, but they didn't do that. They are going to take a hard look at all the new case law that has been generated … and whether it seems like the state will ultimately be successful, and I believe that they are going to deny the stay. In my heart I believe it because we are on the right side of this.”

Noted Latta, “The burden is on the state to prove that our marriages are detrimental to anyone, and they can't. We are going to win because all we are asking for is to be treated like everyone else, and that is not an unreasonable thing to ask for.”

Latta and her wife Traci Ehlers, of Boise, have been together for 10 years, and were legally married in California in 2008. They are one of four couples who successfully sued to overturn Idaho’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage; U.S. Magistrate Judge Candy Dale ruled the ban unconstitutional on Tuesday. The state is appealing to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.



Betsy Z. Russell
Betsy Z. Russell joined The Spokesman-Review in 1991. She currently is a reporter in the Boise Bureau covering Idaho state government and politics, and other news from Idaho's state capital.

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