Professor David S. Cohen has joined attorneys from Dechert LLP in representing 32 same-sex couples who hope to intervene in a legal battle surrounding Pennsylvania’s marriage law. 

Both the Philadelphia Inquirer and WHYY radio cited Cohen’s involvement in the case challenging the constitutionality of Pennsylvania’s marriage law, which defines marriage exclusively as a union of a man and a woman. 

The couples are among more than 100 same-sex pairs who received marriage licenses from Montgomery County Register of Wills D. Bruce Hanes.  The state took legal action, seeking to prevent Hanes from issuing more marriage licenses. 

The couples Cohen is representing hope to “add their personal stories about how this unconstitutional law affects their day to day lives," the professor told WHYY in an interview that aired on August 21. "And in Pennsylvania, there's hundreds of ways that married couples get rights and benefits and rights and responsibilities that unmarried couples do not."