First they successfully sued to overturn a voter-passed, state constitutional amendment securing marriage as between one man and one woman.
Now they want Wisconsin’s voters to pay them nearly $1.25 million for doing it.
According to a Wisconsin State Journal report, the legal team headed by the American Civil Liberties Union, or ACLU, sued in February to overturn Wisconsin’s amendment banning same-sex marriage that had been twice passed by both houses of the State Legislature and received 59-percent voter approval in 2006.
The attorneys secured the decision of U.S. District Judge Barbara Crabb against the amendment in June, and the U.S. Supreme Court let the ruling stand, effectively opening the door to same-sex marriages in Wisconsin.
Now the ACLU is appealing to Crabb again, seeking nearly $1.25 million in attorney fees and costs as part of its victory.
In a filing late Friday afternoon in U.S. District Court in Madison, the Journal reports, the legal team argued its 13 lawyers and support staff should be reimbursed for 2,393 hours on the case, in part because the state’s attorneys were so aggressive in the constitutional amendment’s defense.
“Defendants’ decisions to file multiple motions, conduct discovery, assert novel arguments, and frantically try to stop marriages from occurring increased the substantive and procedural complexity of plaintiffs’ counsels’ work in the trial court and the Court of Appeals, and thus the time required to competently prosecute the action,” wrote lawyers for the plaintiffs.
The group also asked Crabb to consider the ACLU’s need to continue the fight in same-sex marriage litigation nationwide.
