[JURIST] US Federal Judge Robert Hinkle on Thursday ruled [opinion, PDF] that the state of Florida must comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges and permit same-sex partners to have their names added to the death certificates of their partners. Despite the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling, Florida maintained that for those who died before the ruling, the law required same-sex spouses to pursue individual court orders in order to change the certificates, as same-sex marriage was then unrecognized in the state. Citing settled court precedent, Hinkle stated that “[a]s a matter of federal constitutional law, a state cannot properly refuse to correct a federal constitutional violation going forward, even if the violation arose before the dispute over the constitutional issue was settled…. If the law were otherwise, the schools might still be segregated.”

The rights of same-sex couples remains an ongoing issue after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision. Last month, a judge for the US District Court for the District of South Carolina ruled [JURIST report] that the state must place the names of both same-sex parents on their children’s birth certificates. Judge Mary Geiger Lewis determined that the state’s act preventing the placement of both parents’ names went against Obergefell [JURIST report]. In December the Arkansas Supreme Court upheld a law [JURIST report] that places only the biological parents on the birth certificate, finding that equal protection was not violated by “acknowledging basic biological truths.” In August New York’s top court expanded the definition of “parent” [JURIST report] to better accommodate same-sex couples.