Newville Seeks to Bypass Trial in North Dakota Marriage Equality Lawsuit

Joshua Newville filed a motion for summary judgment Tuesday in the historic lawsuit challenging North Dakota’s ban on same-sex marriage.

From the Guardian Newspaper:

A lawyer filed a motion late Tuesday calling on a judge to rule on the legality of gay marriage in North Dakota, the last US state to face a challenge to its constitutional ban on same-sex unions.

Attorney Joshua Newville, representing seven couples in the state, filed the motion for dismissal in the US district court in Fargo in a move that has been successfully used in other states wrestling with same-sex marriage bans. Other bans are currently being challenged in states including Colorado and Georgia.

Newville’s original suit, filed in June, argues that the ban subjects same-sex couples seeking to marry to “an irreparable denial of their constitutional rights” and the state “will incur little to no burden in allowing same-sex couples to marry and in recognizing the lawful marriages of same-sex couples from other jurisdictions on the same terms as different-sex couples”.

Earlier this month North Dakota solicitor general Doug Bahr called for Newville’s case to be dismissed arguing that states have the right to define and regulate marriage. Newville, a lawyer with the Minneapolis-based firm Madia Law, said: “We are seeking an order from a district judge that declares marriage equality the law of the land in North Dakota.”

North Dakota is the final state to face a challenge to a same-sex marriage ban. The legal case comes after a series of l