A New York citizens group is challenging the state’s new law legalizing same-sex marriage, claiming improper procedure and back room payoffs should render the law “null and void.”
In a lawsuit filed in the Supreme Court of the State of New York, New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms argues that the state’s Marriage Equality Act was passed illegally with the help of suspended voting rules, shady campaign contributions and a violation of the New York State Open Meeting Laws.
“In what many are heralding as a big step forward for gay rights,” the lawsuit charges, “others are questioning whether the corrupt legislative process by which the Act passed renders the entire Act a nullity.”
Josh Vlasto, a spokesman for Governor Andrew Cuomo, blasted the suit as “without merit,” but Mathew Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel and dean of Liberty University School of Law, disagrees.
“Back room tactics were rampant in the passage of this law,” Staver wrote in a statement announcing Liberty Counsel’s assistance in the filing of the suit. “New York law requires that the government be open and transparent to keep political officials responsible. When government operates in secret and freezes out the very people it is supposed to represent, the entire system fails. … The law should be set aside and the process should begin again to allow the people a voice in the process.”
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