The mayors of Chapel Hill, Carrboro and Hillsborough have joined 223 other mayors in signing an amicus brief, urging the Supreme Court to rule for equal marriage rights nationwide.

Chapel Hill Mayor Mark Kleinschmidt told WCHL that there’s good reason for the Supreme Court to listen to mayors, not just state and federal legislators, when it comes to speaking for the rights of citizens.

“We’re talking about people and their daily lives,” said Kleinschmidt. “And mayors are in a closer relationship with their citizens in that regard.”

For several years, Kleinschmidt has been a member of Mayors for the Freedom to Marry. It’s a group of around 700 mayors, joined under the banner of Freedom to Marry, a national coalition of state organizations and allies working for marriage equality.

Kleinschmidt, along with Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle and Hillsborough Mayor Tom Stevens, joined 223 other mayors in signing a friends-of-the-court brief that was filed with the U.S. Supreme Court last week.

This spring, a battle that could be a decisive one for the war will be fought there.

On April 28, the justices will hear arguments in Obergefell vs. Hodges, the leading Ohio case linked with other marriage-equality cases from Tennessee, Michigan and Kentucky.

Federal courts have ruled in recent years that denying marriage equality was a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

Judges struck down discriminatory laws across the country. In North Carolina, the Amendment 1 gay marriage ban was struck down in October.

“But things changed a little bit this last year, when the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals – which is made up of Michigan and Ohio and Tennessee – came up with a different decision,” said Kleinschmidt. “They held that there was not a fundamental right to marry.”

That decision, which would uphold same-sex marriage bans across the nation, creates what Kleinschmidt calls “a very sharp division between the 6th Circuit and every other federal court in the country that has taken up this issue.”

That’s why the U.S. Supreme Court granted a review of the case.

There are two main questions being considered.

Does the U.S. Constitution require states to recognize the right of same-sex couples to marry, or do state governments and voters within states get to decide who has that right?

And: Are states required to recognize same-sex marriages from other states?

A lot of issues come into play here – inheritance rights, hospital visitation rights, parental rights, and travel rights, to name a few.

Carrboro Mayor Lydia Lavelle recently got married to longtime partner Alicia Stemper, in a public ceremony at Town Commons. She said that not being treated equally wherever she travels – in her own country – really hits home with her these days.

“I hadn’t even really thought about it that way,” said Lavelle, “because I felt like, whew, I’m finally married. Well, I go home to visit my family in Ohio, and I’m not.”

There’s reason for Lavelle and other to feel encouraged, though. Freedom to Marry has allies from both sides of the political allies in the U.S. Conference of Mayors, and within its own group.

“We have mayors of both parties who are part of our program,” said Freedom to Marry’s National Campaign Director Marc Solomon. “One of our co-chairs, the mayor of San Diego, is a Republican. And we have several other Republican mayors who are part of the effort.”

Here in North Carolina, however, same-sex marriage remains a partisan issue at the state capitol.

Last week, the Republican-controlled N.C. House took up Senate Bill 2, which would allow magistrates and people working at deeds offices to deny marriage-related services to same-sex couples, based on religious objections. That GOP-backed bill passed the Senate, almost strictly on party lines.

Kleinschmidt calls that notion – that government employees could selectively deny services – “outrageous.”

He said that if Senate Bill 2 passes the House, then Gov. Pat McCrory will certainly hear from him, as well as three other openly gay mayors in North Carolina.

“I’ll be asking him to veto it,” said Kleinschmidt. “If he doesn’t veto it, and it becomes law, I anticipate that there are going to be court challenges to Senate Bill 2 almost immediately.”