On Nov. 12, Richard Gergel, a U.S. District Court judge ruled a same-sex marriage ban was unconstitutional in South Carolina, issuing a verdict that otherwise contradicts what state voters passed into constitutional amendment in 2006, banning gay marriage by a vast margin. According to Gergel's verdict, that South Carolina law infringes on the Constitution's due process and equal protection clause.

AP reports that Gergel issued the ruling in favor of Colleen Condon and Ann Bleckley, a Charleston-based lesbian couple who filed a lawsuit against the state when they were refused a marriage license.

Though Gergel permitted the state's motion for a provisional delay on issuing sex-same marriage licenses until Nov. 20, South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Attorney General Alan Wilson are projected to appeal Gergel's decision, which included hindering Wilson and others in the state from enforcing the ban.

In October, a U.S. appeals court overturned a same-sex marriage ban in Virginia. Nevertheless, the court has jurisdiction over North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia, with South Carolina being the only state in the circuit to resume rejecting marriage licenses to LGBT couples after the verdict, The Huffington Post reports.

"This administration will continue to uphold the will of the people," Haley said in a statement made last month.

According to USA Today, a few months ago, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals vetoed Virginia's same-sex marriage prohibition. When the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal of the case in early October, some interpreted that as a de facto ruling on other states' gay-marriage laws that are under the jurisdiction of the 4th Circuit, including South Carolina. South Carolina was the only state in the circuit refusing to allow such marriages.

"This court has carefully reviewed the language of South Carolina's constitutional and statutory ban on same sex marriage and now finds that there is no meaningful distinction between the existing South Carolina provisions and those of Virginia declared unconstitutional," Gergel wrote. "The Court finds that (the Virginia decision) controls the disposition of the issues before this court and establishes, without question, the right of Plaintiffs to marry as sames sex partners. The arguments of Defendent Wilson simply attempt to relitigate matters already addressed and resolved in (the Virginia decision)."