According to this post at How Appealing, the Appellate Court of Connecticut ruled that the Connecticut state courts did not have the jurisdiction to dissolve a Vermont Civil Union. Following the links in that post I read the AP article on this subject and the Connecticut Appellate Court's opinion.

For more information on the case I looked up the Vermont State Supreme Court opinion which forced the Vermont legislature to pass the civil union law, this law itself, and an article explaining the difficulty of dissolving civil unions if you live out of state.

The crux of the problem is that one can only dissolve a civil union or marriage in Vermont if one is a Vermont resident. For marriage this is not a problem because one can get the marriage annulled in annother state and Vermont will recognize it. However, for a civil union, other states like Connecticut claim they do not have to recognize the civil unions and do not have to treat them like marriage when interpreting their own laws.

Howard Bashman, the blogosphere's resident appellate expert, mentions, "Of course, the parties still can seek further appellate review from the Supreme Court of Connecticut," but I was wondering whether they'd have any of the following options:

1. Sue in Vermont state courts claiming that the civil union law doesn't give them the same rights as married couples since it is substantially harder to dissolve.
(I would guess that the answer would be that since they are residents of Vermont and thus not subject to Vermont law, the protections guaranteed by the Vermont constitution no longer apply to them.)

2. Sue in federal court claiming that the Vermont court misinterpreted the "full faith and credit" clause of the US constitution.
(I would guess that although they could make this appeal, that the federal court would be unlikely to overrule the State court's interpretation of what Connecticut's governmental interest in not recognizing civil unions as the equivalent of marriage.)

Furthermore, it seems to me that the plaintiff in this case has not demonstrated injury. If the plaintiff and his partner are not residents of Vermont, and the state where the plaintiff resides and the state where his partner resides do not recognize any of the responsibilities of a civil union, then what injury in fact has the plaintiff sustained by the continued existence of the civil union? How would dissolving this civil union relieve any harm done to the plaintiff?

I suppose if the court does not have jurisdiction then it is perhaps a moot point whether the plaintiff has standing, but it seems to me that he doesn't.

Finally, aside from the legal aspects, what do I think of Civil Unions? My general thoughts on policy concerning sexual orientation has been that I support anything which forces secular bodies and the state to treat people equally regardless of sexual orientation, but that such laws cannot (constitutionally) and should not be applied to religious organizations. Since marriage is both a religions and a civil act, I've previously thought that the government has no buisness in deciding who can or cannot be married, but that they should instead have a purely secular notion of civil unions which would legally replace marriage. However, in rethinking the issue today after reading this article and this article, thinking over the issues raised by the Connecticut court opinion, and thinking about how my opinions have changed since I last thought about this issue, I have come to the conclusion that I support same-sex "marriages" given not just equal treatment by the law but the same name by the law, because otherwise they would not have the same weight attached to them by society, and such a law would not have the same immediate impact on all aspects of the laws of all states.