Five more states are allowing same-sex couples to wed after the U.S. Supreme Court turned down all pending appeals cases filed by those states during the week of Oct. 6.
Those states are Utah, Oklahoma, Virginia, Indiana and Wisconsin.
For the past several years, many states have been fighting for the freedom to perform same-sex marriage within their borders.
A North Carolina federal judge struck down West Virginia’s and Colorado’s same-sex marriage ban on Oct. 10 due to a decision that a gay-marriage ban was unconstitutional. This was made by the appeals court and had been left standing by the Supreme Court.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for San Francisco’s Ninth Circuit struck down bans for Idaho and Nevada, adding two more to the total of states with the freedom to marry on Oct. 7.
All these victories add up to 10 states in total that have given the right for same-sex marriages to take place since Oct. 6, bringing the overall number of states to 29, plus the District of Columbia.
Excluding the aforementioned states, others include California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Iowa, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
However, gay-rights activists are still pushing for nationwide marriage freedom.
The remaining states not mentioned above still have legislation that ban or limit marriage rights to same-sex couples.