whether the Supreme Court's dismissal of Baker v. Nelson (1972) is binding precedent in this case. Tennessee officials filed a brief in opposition to the plaintiffs' petition on December 15. On January 16, 2015, the United States Supreme Court consolidated this case with three others and agreed to review the case. It set a briefing schedule to be completed April 17. The court asked the parties to address two questions: "1) Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex? 2) Does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed and performed out-of-state?" The plaintiff-petitioners told the court that Douglas Hallward-Driemeier of the law firm of Ropes & Gray would represent them at oral argument. On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on the case, which had been consolidated with three other cases from Michigan, Ohio, and Kentucky, in Obergefell v. Hodges. In a 5–4 decision written by Justice Kennedy and joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, the Supreme Court held that state bans on same-sex marriage are a violation of the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. This ruling extended the right to same-sex marriage to the entire United States and required that states recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in other states. The ruling continued Justice Anthony Kennedy's legacy as a top jurist for gay rights in America, having now written four high court opinion favoring gays and lesbians; June 26, 2015 was the 2-year anniversary of the decision in United States v. Windsor, which overturned part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and the 12th anniversary of the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned anti-sodomy laws in the United States. Kennedy issued his first major gay rights decision in 1996 in Romer v. Evans. See also Recognition of same-sex unions in Tennessee Same-sex marriage in the United States LGBT rights in Tennessee Tennessee Equality Project References External links Tanco v. Haslam, No. 14-562: U.S. Supreme Court official Docket entry Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, Tanco v. Haslam, November 6, 2014 Tennessee law United States same-sex union case law 2014 in United States case law 2014 in Tennessee United States Supreme Court cases United States Supreme Court cases of the Roberts Court