(Al Jazeera) Two months after the U.S. Supreme Court ended the legal debate over same-sex marriage by declaring it a constitutionally protected civil right, attorneys general and governors who fought it are receiving unpleasant souvenirs of failure: Invoices from the attorneys who beat them.
States that defended same-sex marriage bans — most did, to some extent — are now being asked to pay the legal fees for those litigants under a 40-year-old federal law that says the court "in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party … a reasonable attorney's fee as part of the costs."
Or as Michigan attorney Dana Nessel put it: "It's the price governments pay for defending bigotry."
Defeat won't come cheap — or, in many cases, without further legal wrangling.