No Action Today from Supreme Court on DOMA, Prop 8 Cases

The Supreme Court did not release a decision today following its conference on DOMA and Proposition 8 cases.

Writes Lyle Denniston at SCOTUSblog:

The Supreme Court, after taking most of the day to prepare new orders, took no action Friday on the ten same-sex marriage cases now on the docket.  It did agree to rule on whether taking a human gene out of the body is a process that can be patented.  It also agreed to rule on legal protection for makers of generic drugs.

The next opportunity for the Court to issue orders will be at 9:30 a.m. Monday.  Nothing has ruled out the possibility that some actions on same-sex marriage could be announced at that time, although there is no indication that that will occur.  It may be that the Court needs more time to decide what it wants to do next on any of the cases.

And this analysis comes from Lambda Legal's Jon Davidson, via journalist Rex Wockner, on what's next:

1.  The Court may announce on Monday that there are additional cases that it has decided to review. There are a number of reasons that the Court may not have felt ready to announce what it is doing today. It could be that the justices needed additional time to craft the language of the order or orders in one or more cases they have decided to hear. (For example, the Court can rewrite the questions they want the parties to address in the case or cases in which they have granted review from the way the parties phrased them in their petitions seeking review.)

2. The Court may announce on Monday some cases it has decided not to review. That might include one or more of the DOMA cases, Perry, or Diaz. Alternatively, the Court could wait to announce anything about any of these cases until the justices are ready to announce what action they have decided to take regarding all of them.

3. The Court may have decided that it needed to discuss the cases further before they can reach their decisions about which cases to hear. The Court's next scheduled conference is next Friday, December 7th. So, it may be that we will all be repeatedly hitting refresh again then (and keeping the dog waiting to be walked) to see if there are orders issued regarding these cases that day.