Jack Wagoner, attorney who challenged Arkansas' same-sex marriage ban, dies

Source: Associated Press

Jack Wagoner, attorney who challenged Arkansas’ same-sex marriage ban, dies

BY ANDREW DEMILLO
Updated 5:58 PM EDT, April 25, 2024

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Attorney Jack Wagoner, who helped successfully challenge Arkansas’ ban on same-sex marriage before state and federal courts, has died. He was 62.

Wagoner died in Little Rock on Tuesday, said Bruce Tennant, an attorney who worked with him at his law firm. Tennant said a cause of death was not yet known.

Wagoner represented same-sex couples who challenged a constitutional amendment that Arkansas voters put in the state’s constitution in 2004 defining marriage as between a man and a woman. A state judge in 2014 struck down the amendment as unconstitutional, which led to more than 500 same-sex couples marrying before the Arkansas Supreme Court put the ruling on hold.

The state Supreme Court didn’t rule on whether the ban was constitutional before the U.S. Supreme Court legalized gay marriage nationwide in 2015. A federal judge also struck down Arkansas’ ban, but put her ruling on hold.

-snip-

Read more: https://apnews.com/article/attorney-arkansas-gay-marriage-jack-wagoner-dies-32a7e21e2502d682c8a192a2fdfdb1a2