The U.S. Supreme Court could rule as soon as Wednesday on whether to allow court employees to use a camera to record the pivotal trial in federal court here on the constitutionality of California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

Though all 50 states allow cameras into some state-level court proceedings, federal courts from the high court on down have for decades generally refused to admit cameras into courtrooms. The chief judge of the Chicago-based U.S. 7th Circuit Court of Appeals went so far as to censure a trial judge in Peoria, Ill., for allowing cameras to record a hearing earlier this year.

Most federal courts say they fear broadcasts will diminish the system’s dignity, could unfairly influence rulings and disrupt proceedings. There is also concern that judges, lawyers and witnesses will pander to the camera while potential jurors will shy away from serving out of concern they will be identified.

U.S. District Court Judge Vaughn Walker of San Francisco and 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski tried recently to buck that trend. Kozinski last month announced a “pilot program” authorizing courts in the nine western states to video record civil trials heard by judges without juries. Walker, relying in the appeals court “pilot program,” approved of a camera for the gay marriage trial, which started Monday and is expected to last at least two weeks.

Walker told lawyers Monday that he intended for the recordings of the trial to be posted only on the court’s Web site after several hours of delay.

Still, in even contemplating the existence of a camera in a federal courtroom, Walker and Kozinski pushed to the boiling point a Supreme Court issue that has been percolating unresolved for decades. The high court on Monday temporarily banned the posting of any recordings to any Web site and the plan to stream video of the trial to other courthouses while it considered an appeal by lawyers fighting to uphold California’s same-sex ban. Those lawyers fear witnesses who testify in support of the ban could face unpleasant reprisals of their testimony is widely broadcast.

First Amendment experts said it is impossible to predict how the high court will rule. It has consistently refused to allow cameras into its own courts, but its 1981 ruling in a Florida case did open state courthouses to cameras.

Lawyers said there appears to be an informal agreement among the justices to keep the court’s own ban in place until there is unanimous consent to let cameras inside. Justice Sonia Sotomayor said during her Senate confirmation hearing that she was open to cameras. Sotomayor replaced the retiring Justice David Souter, who famously said he would allow cameras in the Supreme Court “over my dead body.”

“It is probably a positive development for camera advocates that Sotomayor has replaced Souter,” said David Hudson, a Vanderbilt University law professor who works with the First Amendment Center.

Congress has failed several times to pass bills introduced to specifically allow the technology in the federal courts, though a new proposal with bipartisan support to allow cameras is pending before the U.S. Senate’s Judiciary Committee.

Six trial courts and two appeals court participated in a three-year study during the 1990s that included granting applications to broadcast 186 hearing, including 56 trials. A majority of judges and lawyers who participated in the program supported opening federal courts to cameras, but the Judicial Conference of the United States – which sets the court system’s policies – still said it was against recording hearings and trials,

The attempt to video record the trial has opened a schism among the nation’s top judges. Kozinski is chief judge of the nation’s largest federal appellate court.

The Judicial Conference of the United States, which is led by Chief Justice John Roberts, warned Kozinski on Friday that it opposes federal civil or criminal trials “to be broadcast, televised, recorded or photographed for the purpose of public dissemination.”

Kozinski responded that the conference’s prohibition addressed only recording made by the media, not by court personnel as ordered by Walker. Kozinski also pointedly noted that the conference ultimately has no power over the 9th Circuit and the other federal appeals courts. “That policy decision rests exclusively with” each court, he said.

“Like it or not, we are well into the Twenty-First Century, and it us up to those of us who lead the federal judiciary to adopt policies that are consistent with the spirit of the times and the advantages afforded us by new technology” Kozinski wrote. “If we do not, Congress will do it for us.”

1. I’m no expert (yet), but panhandling strikes me as a profession that requires a soft sell.

2. Do all Oklahoma politicians dance with the crazy?

3. Is it a good idea to keep allies from joining the federal lawsuit for gay marriage?

4. A Merlose Place redux? The first one stank. What TV executive green lighted this wreck?

5. Israeli Army soldier Shmuel Freimark’s lawyer needs to come up with a better excuse for his client’s madness. Threats to kill because your tribe is getting bad press is a dumb tactic.

6. The initial TABC report shows what most knew. The authorities had no business raiding the Rainbow Lounge this past June.

7. Are most baseball fans by nature nostalgic and anti-modernity?

8. For the first time in awhile I was able to go to my local bar this weekend, and not feign interest for a conversation.

9. Never liked any film by John Hughes (RIP). For some reason they never resonated. I did however, have a serious crush on Anthony Michael Hall. Always have love for the nerds.

10. This story shows it’s time for us old-heads to change up our views on sexuality.

That’s because Ritchie and her spouse, Kathleen Bush, are a gay couple, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act makes them ineligible to file joint tax returns.

Now Ritchie, Bush and more than a dozen others are suing the federal government, claiming the act discriminates against gay couples and is unconstitutional because it denies them access to federal benefits that other married couples receive, such as pensions and health insurance. Plaintiffs also include Dean Hara, the widower of former U.S. Rep. Gerry Studds, the first openly gay member of the House of Representatives.

In Ritchie’s case, she and her spouse say they have paid nearly $15,000 more in taxes than they would have if they had been able to file joint returns.

“It saddens us because we love our country,” Ritchie said. “We are taxpayers. We live just like anyone else in our community. We do everything just like every other family, like every other married couple, and we are treated like less than that.”

The lawsuit was being filed Tuesday in federal court in Boston by Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, the anti-discrimination group that brought a successful legal challenge leading to Massachusetts becoming the first state in the nation to legalize gay marriage in 2004.

Only Massachusetts and Connecticut allow gay marriage. Vermont, Connecticut, New Jersey and New Hampshire allow civil unions.

Californians voted in November to overturn a court ruling that allowed gay marriage, but the state still offers domestic partnerships that guarantee the same rights as marriage. Hawaii is considering a bill that will allow same-sex civil unions.

The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, was enacted by Congress in 1996 when it appeared Hawaii would soon legalize same-sex marriage and opponents worried that other states would be forced to recognize such marriages. The new lawsuit challenges only the portion of the law that prevents the federal government from affording Social Security and other benefits to same-sex couples.

President Barack Obama has pledged to work to repeal DOMA and reverse the Department of Defense policy that prevents openly gay people from serving in the military.

Mary Bonauto, GLAD’s Civil Rights Project director, said the lawsuit is the first major challenge to the section of the law that denies same-sex couples access to more than 1,000 federal programs and legal protections in which marriage is a factor.

All the plaintiffs are from Massachusetts and have marriages that are recognized by the state. They include a U.S. Postal Service employee who wasn’t allowed to add her spouse to her health insurance plan; a Social Security Administration retiree who was denied health insurance for his spouse; three widowers who were denied death benefits for funeral expenses; and a man who has been denied a passport bearing his married name.

“This law is an absolute intrusion into an area that states have governed for centuries – marriage,” Bonauto said.

In Hara’s case, he was denied any portion of Studds’ $114,000 pension after the Democratic congressman died in 2006. The two married in 2004 after being together for 14 years.

“I am not being treated the same as any other surviving spouse of any other federal employee or public servant who has served this country for 27 years, when I have been legally married,” Hara said.

Defendants in the lawsuit are the United States of America and several federal agencies, which are being represented by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“Obviously, we are going to take a look at it and make a determination as to how the government would ultimately respond after we review it,” DOJ spokesman Charles Miller said.

Laurence Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard Law School, said the lawsuit is a “plausible challenge” to DOMA.

“It’s a question of whether Congress oversteps its bounds and engages in irrational discrimination when it draws a line in terms of concrete benefits for individuals who are otherwise eligible simply because the marriages they have entered involve same-sex couples rather than opposite-sex couples,” he said.

Opponents of same-sex marriage say those who challenge DOMA are trying to impose gay marriage on the rest of the country.

“Massachusetts has made benefits available on a state level, but Massachusetts can’t force the federal government’s hand or the other states to accept same-sex marriage,” said Mathew Staver, founder of the Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit that says it’s dedicated to advancing religious freedom and the traditional family.