Last Thursday, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there is no constitutional right to same-sex marriage. It is the first federal court to have ruled against marriage equality since the issue first hit the circuit in 2010, with the landmark Hollingsworth v. Perry, better known as California’s Prop 8 case. 

However disappointing as this latest ruling may seem, I think this will actually benefit marriage equality and its supporters.

I would first like to make a side note that, in my opinion, marriage equality is by no means the most pressing issue facing the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer community. 29 states lack employment non-discrimination laws for lesbian, gay, bisexual and queer workers. 32 states lack the same laws for trans, intersex and gender non-conforming individuals. In these states, someone can be fired for nothing more than whom they love or how they choose to express their gender identity. In 29 states, there is no law that bans discrimination against LGBTQ people in a public accommodation, like a restaurant or store. 

20 states still do not have laws that classify crimes comitted on the basis of someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity as hate crimes. 40 percent of the homeless youth population is LGBTQ, and over half of them have experienced sexual violence or prostitution, based on statistics from the Forty to None Project. According to the Trevor Project, between 30 to 40 percent of LGBTQ teenagers have attempted suicide, a rate four times higher than than that in the general youth population.

The problems listed above do not have an easy solution in the way that marriage equality does. Issues of homelessness, bullying and suicide require changing cultural attitudes and creating more safe spaces at schools and in the wider community for LGBTQ youth to feel welcome. Employment non-discrimination laws and public accommodation laws are seemingly in the same vein as the civil rights movement of the 1960s, are not. An employer could make a First Amendment argument that hiring or serving a member of the LGBTQ community violates their religious beliefs. While this argument is dubious at best and, in my opinion, is a flawed interpretation of the First Amendment, there is always a chance that the Supreme Court would agree with this line of thinking, as best demonstrated in this summer’s Hobby Lobby decision, which established that corporations and companies can have First Amendment religious freedoms. 

So, why is this appeal court ruling denying marriage equality to Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee actually a good thing? This decision has created what is known as a “circuit split,” a situation where two federal appeals courts have different interpretations of federal law or of constitutional law. Circuit splits are one of the most common reasons that the Supreme Court will agree to hear a case. Some famous cases that arose out of circuit splits were last summer’s Hobby Lobby case, the Affordable Care Act case of 2012 and the Citizens United case of 2010.

This fast-tracking to the Supreme Court is important for two reasons. First of all, while speaking at the University of Minnesota Law School in September, Supreme Court Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that the Court was not going to rush for a national answer for the marriage equality until there was a circuit split. 

At the time of her statement, three appellate courts, the Fourth, Seventh and Tenth, had all come to the same conclusion in regard to bans on same-sex marriage and had ruled such bans to be unconstitutional. 

Obviously, the Sixth’s decision is that circuit split, and if what Ginsburg said is true, this ruling might just trigger the Supreme Court to make a national decision, simply because there is now a need to settle the question of marriage equality’s constitutionality. 

The second reason is, simply, the trajectory marriage equality has been on, especially given former Supreme Court action on the issue. Again, until the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals’ ruling, no federal court had actually ruled against marriage equality. In 2013, the Supreme Court overturned California’s ban on same-sex marriage and ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act, a law banning federal recognition of same-sex marriages, was unconstitutional. On Oct. 6 of this year, the Supreme Court denied petition to review the decisions of the Fourth, Seventh and Tenth Circuit Courts, de facto legalizing same-sex marriage in 11 states.

The Supreme Court has set its own precedent for marriage equality cases, and it has ruled that bans on marriage equality cannot be upheld. That is not to say the case coming from the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals will be a slam dunk. The Court has not explicitly said there is a Constitutional right to marriage equality, and there is always the possibility that a ruling could be very narrow and apply only to the states with in the Sixth Circuit’s jurisdiction. The Court could even refuse to take up the case. 

Regardless of the outcome, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has sped up the process of bringing a major marriage equality case before the Supreme Court. 

More and more states, and a growing percentage of the American population, clearly think that marriage equality is a major issue that needs to be addressed. That in itself is another victory for fairness and equality.