[1] The court found the equal protection analysis used in Bourke v. Beshear, a case dealing with a comparable Kentucky statute "especially persuasive.

Tanco was appealed to the Sixth Circuit, which reversed the district court and upheld Tennessee's refusal to recognize same-sex marriages from other jurisdictions on November 6.

On March 14, 2014, U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger granted a preliminary injunction requiring the state to recognize the marriages of the three plaintiff couples.

"[8][9] The state immediately filed a motion to stay this ruling, but on March 20, Judge Trauger denied the request, reasoning that unlike the stay ordered by the U.S. Supreme Court in Kitchen v. Herbert "the court's order does not open the floodgates for same-sex couples to marry in Tennessee ... [and] applies only to the three same-sex couples at issue in this case.

[13] It said it was bound by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1972 action in a similar case, Baker v. Nelson, which dismissed a same-sex couple's marriage claim "for want of a substantial federal question."

Dissenting, Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey wrote: "Because the correct result is so obvious, one is tempted to speculate that the majority has purposefully taken the contrary position to create the circuit split regarding the legality of same-sex marriage that could prompt a grant of certiorari by the Supreme Court and an end to the uncertainty of status and the interstate chaos that the current discrepancy in state laws threatens.

The ruling continued Justice Anthony Kennedy's legacy as a top jurist for gay rights in America, having now written four high court opinion favoring gays and lesbians; June 26, 2015 was the 2-year anniversary of the decision in United States v. Windsor, which overturned part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and the 12th anniversary of the decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which overturned anti-sodomy laws in the United States.