BOSTON (AP) — A federal appeals court Friday rejected a last-minute bid to stop the nation's first state-sanctioned gay marriages from taking place on Monday.
Conservative groups immediately appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a ruling by U.S. District Judge Joseph L. Tauro, who earlier this week refused to issue an emergency injunction to stop the gay weddings.
But the appeals court said it would hear arguments in the case in June, after several weeks of legal gay marriages.
The injunction was requested by a group of state lawmakers and conservative activists.
"This case is far from over," Mathew Staver, president and general counsel of the Florida-based Liberty Counsel, said Friday after learning that the request had been rejected. "I don't get discouraged at minor bumps in the road, and this is just a bump. We certainly have not come to the end of the road."
On Thursday, Tauro ruled that the state's high court acted within its authority by ruling in November that gay couples have the right under the Massachusetts Constitution to marry.
Tauro said the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court "has the authority to interpret, and reinterpret, if necessary, the term marriage as it appears in the Massachusetts Constitution."
Marriages will go forward Monday unless the Supreme Court intervenes.
U.S. Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, who is assigned to hear emergency appeals from the 1st Circuit, could decide the request for an emergency injunction on his own or refer it to the full court.