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Gay Marriage Withstands Legal Threat

New York’s highest court declined on Tuesday to hear a challenge to the state’s gay-marriage law, ending the only significant legal threat to same-sex weddings in the state.

The Court of Appeals rejected a motion by a conservative group, New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, which had accused the State Senate of violating the state’s Open Meetings Law in its deliberations before it voted last year to allow gay men and lesbians to marry. The court did not provide an explanation of its decision.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who had pressed for the legalization of same-sex marriage, hailed the court’s action.

“With the court’s decision, same-sex couples no longer have to worry that their right to marry could be legally challenged in this state,” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said in a statement on Tuesday. “The freedom to marry in this state is secure for generations to come.”

The Rev. Jason J. McGuire, the executive director of New Yorkers for Constitutional Freedoms, said the court’s decision was disappointing but not surprising. He added that opponents of the marriage law were focusing their attention on defeating legislators who voted last year for the Marriage Equality Act after previously saying they opposed same-sex marriage.

“I think the issue now begins to turn to other things,” Mr. McGuire said. “The people will have another chance to vote in two weeks on legislators who I think went rogue.”

Mr. McGuire predicted that future legal cases regarding the marriage law would focus not on the law itself, but on issues of religious freedoms relating to same-sex weddings.

Since July 2011, when the New York law took effect, more than 10,000 same-sex couples have been issued marriage licenses.

Last year, a judge allowed a portion of the challenge against the marriage law to move forward and criticized Mr. Cuomo for “arm-twisting” as he pressed for its passage. But this past July, an appeals court unanimously rejected the open-meetings argument, and the Court of Appeals amounted to the last hope for opponents to keep the case alive.

The legal challenge had focused on two closed-door meetings that the Senate’s Republican majority held in the run-up to the marriage vote, one with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the other with Mr. Cuomo. The lawsuit asserted that the meetings should have been held in public, and it asked for the marriage law to be overturned.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 20 of the New York edition with the headline: Gay Marriage Withstands Legal Threat. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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