U.S. District Court Judge John E. Jones III on Wednesday rejected a Schuylkill County official's attempt to challenge his May 20 ruling that struck down Pennsylvania's ban on same sex marriage as unconstitutional.

Theresa Santai-Gaffney, clerk of the orphans' court and Register of Wills, the office that issues marriage licenses, filed a petition to appeal Jones' ruling about two weeks after it was handed down. Santai had argued that states, not federal judges, should decide whether same-sex couples should have equal rights to marriage. She also argued that Jones' ruling made her duties unclear."This court respects Santai-Gaffney's evidently deep, personal disagreement with our decision to strike down the marriage laws. That said, we lament that she has used her office as a platform to file the motion we dispose of today," Jones wrote."There is nothing remotely ambiguous about how Santai-Gaffney must perform her duties relative to issuing marriage licenses. For her to represent otherwise is wholly disingenuous. At bottom, we have before us a contrived legal argument by a private citizen who seeks to accomplish what the chief executive of the commonwealth, in his wisdom, has declined to do," he wrote.Efforts to reach Santai-Gaffney for comment were unsuccessful Wednesday. Her office staff said she will not be available until Monday.In his 10-page ruling, Jones wrote that Santai-Gaffney did not meet the elements necessary to merit the intervention, and that her duties were "purely ministerial."Santai-Gaffney argued that her rights and duties are affected by the ruling because of her "marriage related duties and enforcing the marriage laws."Jones cited a 2013 Commonwealth Court ruling, stating that she lacks the right to intervene because her duties must be performed "in a prescribed manner in obedience to the mandate of legal authority and without regard to (her) own judgment or opinion concerning the propriety or impropriety of the act to be performed."In other words, Santai-Gaffney's rights and duties are to comply with current law, and she may not exercise her own judgment when issuing marriage licenses.Santai-Gaffney also argued that her duties became "unclear" after Gov. Tom Corbett announced the state would not appeal Jones' May 20 ruling. He made the announcement on May 21."Nothing could be further from the truth," Jones wrote.He wrote that his ruling struck down the state's laws against same-sex marriage, and any enforcement of this laws. Same-sex couples in Pennsylvania may marry, and their out-of-state marriages must be recognized by the commonwealth."Our decision was entirely unequivocal, as was the governor's decision not to appeal," Jones wrote.Further clarifying the matter, Jones wrote, was that the state Department of Health on June 11 issued a notice to all clerks of Orphans Courts that the May 20 ruling "requires that every government official who administers the marriage law including every clerk of the orphans' court to perform his or her duties in accordance with the court's order."Finally, Jones ruled that Santai-Gaffney has "no protectable interest in the constitutionality of the marriage laws, and so cannot argue that her rights and interests weren't represented by the defendants in the original case."