I was wrong yesterday in my reasoning

In a blog yesterday, speculating about why the SCOTUS justices did not take any of the cases about marriage equality, one of the possible explanations I advanced was that some of the justices wanted to leave it as an individual state option.

Rethinking that today, I realize that cannot be the case.   In fact, refusing to hear the cases, and thus letting the overturn of bans by appellate courts become the law for those regions, actually goes against the states' decisions.

In each of these cases, the voters had passed a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.  The appellate court decisions, that were being appealed, overturned the bans.

So, if there's any federalism involved in this, it would be to let the 11 Circuit Courts of Appeal make the decisions by region, not the states.  That doesn't seem likely to be anyone's intent, so it must be a compromise -- or perhaps a stalemate.

So the possible explanation I will add today is that perhaps at least some of the justices want to wait and see if any of those 11 appeals courts uphold the bans.   Then maybe they would hear that case.

Ralph