Update: The U.S. Supreme Court released three decisions today, none of which was one of the closely watched cases on same-sex marriage, the Voting Rights Act and affirmative action in school admissions.
The court now has 11 cases still remaining.
There are only two scheduled decision-release days left, Monday and Thursday -- though it's possible the court will go even beyond that date in coming to grips with the potential landmark cases remaining.
While you're waiting ... and waiting and waiting .... here's everything you ever wanted to know about the Prop. 8 case and then some. The Reader's Digest version:
Prop. 8 is California's same-sex marriage ban that was struck down on narrow grounds by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Should SCOTUS uphold that decision, same-sex marriages could begin again in California in mid-to-late July, according to San Francisco City Attorney Dennis Herrera's office. (San Francisco was an intervenor in the case on the plaintiff's side.) If the court uses the case to issue a more sweeping ruling that all same-sex marriage bans are illegal, that would effectively legalize same-sex marriage throughout the country.
Legal analyst Vikram Amar, however, told KQED's Scott Shafer last week that a broad decision declaring a fundamental nationwide right to same-sex marriage is highly unlikely. “It's very rare for the court to invalidate the laws of two-thirds or three-quarters of the states,” Amar said. He noted that when bans on interracial marriage were struck down in 1967, only 16 states had such laws -- compared with 35 that now ban gay marriage.