Michael Dorf has an interesting and careful post where he analyzes whether last Friday’s decision in Garden State Equality v. Dow (the New Jersey civil unions case discussed here) raises a question of federal law reviewable by the Supreme Court. While the opinion is ambiguous with respect to the key question, he concludes that the answer is “yes.”
This is yet another aspect of the decision that will hopefully be resolved with more clarity on appeal. (I should note, for those who aren’t closely attentive to the Supreme Court that the fact that the Court might have jurisdiction to take the case, does not mean that the Court would actually decide to do so. The Court has discretion over what cases it hears, and hears only a very small fraction of the cases presented to it.)