Outside the Supreme Court in 2013 (Getty Images)

The Supreme Court said (PDF) it will determine whether gay marriage is allowed under the Constitution before it ends its term.

According to the Post “the court will answer a question left open when it last confronted the issue in 2013 and said that a key portion of the federal Defense of Marriage Act was unconstitutional and in a separate case allowed same-sex marriages to resume in California.” More from the Post:

The court Friday accepted cases from Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, where restrictions about same-sex marriage were upheld by an appeals court, to confront the issue. The court will hear oral arguments in April and decide the issue by the time justices adjourn in June.

The NY Times reports, “Largely as a consequence of the Supreme Court’s failure to act in October, the number of states allowing same-sex marriage has since grown to 36, and more than 70 percent of Americans live in places where gay couples can marry. The pace of change on same-sex marriage, in both popular opinion and in the courts, has no parallel in the nation’s history.”

Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said in a statement that, “marriage has returned to the U.S. Supreme Court faster than virtually any other issue in American history, and there’s a simple reason for that–committed and loving gay and lesbian couples, their children, and the fair-minded American people refuse to wait a single day longer. As Justice Anthony Kennedy said in the Windsor case, this is a struggle over whether our families are equal or whether they are second class. The U.S. constitution does not tolerate second-class citizenship, a fact that has toppled discriminatory marriage bans from Utah to Arkansas. We’ve reached the moment of truth–the facts are clear, the arguments have been heard by dozens of courts, and now the nine justices of the Supreme Court have an urgent opportunity to guarantee fairness for countless families, once and for all.”