FALLS CHURCH, Va. (AP) — A judge recently struck down a Virginia law requiring marriage applicants to disclose their race, but the two sides in the legal dispute disagree over what the judge’s ruling means.
Earlier this month, federal judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. in Alexandria ruled that a Virginia law requiring marriage applicants to state their race is unconstitutional and can’t be enforced.
Whether applicants can be asked to disclose their race on an optional basis, though, is still a matter of dispute. State officials say they believe they can still ask the question, as long as it’s clear that applicants can decline to answer.
That was the compromise Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring put forward immediately after the lawsuit was filed, saying it allowed Virginians to get married without forcing them to label themselves against their will without entirely disregarding a state law.
The lawyer who filed the suit says the question must be removed from the form entirely.
Victor Glasberg, who represents three couples who challenged the law, said in court papers the requirement is a vestige of segregation and should be wiped off the application.
Glasberg wrote that while he believes Alston’s ruling was clear about the issue in the first place, he urged Alston to clarify to state officials that the race question must be struck entirely “and that the Jim Crow provision here at issue be consigned to the legal dustbin.”
Alston’s Oct. 11 ruling granted Glasberg’s motion for summary judgment, in which the plaintiffs specifically asked, among other things, that “a revised application without the racial inquiry be disseminated.”
The 19-page ruling, though, only barred Virginia from enforcing the statute “to the extent it burdens individuals’ fundamental right to marry.”
In court papers, Virginia Solicitor General Toby Heytens said the court understood the ruling to be limited, but will comply with whatever further guidance the court provides. He said that he hopes and expects the legislature will erase the law from the books entirely, but “Until then, defendant is simply endeavoring to comply with her legal obligations under the Constitution and Virginia law.”
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