[JURIST] Virginia officials reached a $520,000 settlement [text] Wednesday over attorney’s fees with challengers of the commonwealth’s same-sex marriage ban. The plaintiffs are allowed to seek attorney’s fees because they successfully challenged the marriage ban under a federal civil rights law. Two law firms worked [NLJ report] on the case: Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher; and Boies, Schiller & Flexner. The lawyers originally sought over $1.7 million for fees and costs and submitted records of 2,372 hours of work.

Last February a judge for the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia struck down [JURIST report] Virginia’s constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. The ban was put in place in 2006, when Virginia voters ratified an amendment (Article I section 15-A) to the Virginia Constitution [text, PDF], which deemed marriage as a union only between a man and a woman. The district court concluded that the marriage laws violated due process and equal protection rights. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld [JURIST report] the lower court’s decision in July and declined to stay its ruling. In August the US Supreme Court put a hold on same-sex marriage in Virginia, but it was lifted when the court refused to hear [JURIST reports] seven appeals concerning same-sex marriage.