Civil disobedience opens the marriage offices
"Civil disobedience": a Colorado court lets same-sex couples go on marrying despite a ban.
On 10 July 2014, a judge in the US state of Colorado ruled that the Boulder County Clerk could continue to issue marriage licences to same-sex couples, even though the state's marriage ban was still formally in force.
Hillary Hall had begun issuing licences to same-sex couples on 25 June 2014, after a federal appeals court declared the marriage ban in neighbouring Utah unconstitutional. Attorney General John Suthers then sued her over what he called "legal chaos". Judge Andrew Hartman explicitly described Hall's actions as civil disobedience, but referred to the tradition of Augustine and Martin Luther King Jr., according to which an unjust law is no law at all. He refused to grant an injunction against her, as the state could not provide sufficient grounds.
Just an hour after the ruling, the Denver Clerk, Debra Johnson, announced that she too would issue licences with immediate effect. Samantha Getman and Victoria Quintana received the city's first licence that afternoon, while Anna and Fran Simon became the first couple to marry in Denver that same day, in the presence of their seven-year-old son Jeremy. The next day Pueblo County followed suit; there alone, 25 licences were issued within a single day.
The legal situation remained fragile, however: on 18 July the Colorado Supreme Court halted further licences in Denver and Adams County by emergency order. Only on 7 October 2014, after the US Supreme Court had declined to hear an appeal, did same-sex marriage finally become legal in Colorado. The marriages already concluded in the summer were unaffected and remained valid.