Three of the four Massachusetts communities that married same-sex couples from outside the state have stopped issuing licenses to non-residents after receiving a warning from the state attorney general.
Worcester, Somerville and Springfield stopped issuing licenses to gay couples on Monday, one week after same-sex marriages became legal in Massachusetts. Officials of the fourth community, Provincetown, planned to meet on Tuesday night to discuss whether to comply with the warning from Attorney General Thomas Reilly.
Before gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts on May 17, Governor Mitt Romney had warned city and town clerks that a 1913 law barred them from marrying gay couples from other states. But clerks in Somerville, Provincetown, Worcester and Springfield defied the Republican governor by giving licences to all those who attested that they knew of no legal impediment to their union.
The 1913 law is a segregation-era statute intended to block interracial marriages. It forbids couples from marrying in Massachusetts if their union would not be recognised in their home state.
On Friday, the Democratic attorney general sent letters to all four clerks, saying he agreed with the governor’s interpretation of the law and planned to enforce it. He did not say what legal action he would take against clerks who continued to defy the state, but legal experts say he could seek a court injunction ordering them to stop.
Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone said on Monday he was asking Reilly for clarification on how to proceed.
”As matter of law and policy, I believe the Somerville city clerk has acted correctly in issuing these licences,” Curtatone wrote in his letter to Reilly.
A city lawyer for Worcester prepared a legal brief arguing that clerk David Rushford has been within the law by granting licences to out-of-staters. — Sapa-AP