By MATT APUZZO
MARCH 28, 2014 - New York Times

WASHINGTON — The federal government will recognize more than 300 same-sex marriages that were performed in Michigan last weekend, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said Friday, a day after Michigan’s governor said his state would not.

Mr. Holder’s announcement caps a week of rapid change and uncertainty over the status of same-sex marriage in Michigan. On March 21, a federal judge struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, and the next morning gay and lesbian couples rushed to exchange vows. By late that afternoon, however, an appeals court stayed the judge’s ruling.

While the appeals play out, the legal status of those unions has been uncertain.

Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, said Thursday that they were “legal and valid marriages” but that the state would not recognize them until the court resolved the matter.

Mr. Holder said the federal government viewed it differently. “These families will be eligible for all relevant federal benefits on the same terms as other same-sex marriages,” he said in a statement released by the Justice Department.

Mr. Holder, a strong advocate for same-sex marriage who has called gay rights one of today’s most important civil rights issues, issued a similar statement in January regarding same-sex couples in Utah.

Last year, the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, a ruling that required the federal government to offer the same benefits to legally married same-sex couples as it does to heterosexual couples.

The court did not decide, however, whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. That shifted the legal battleground to the states, where several bans on same-sexmarriage face court challenges.

Mr. Holder, who did not defend the Defense of Marriage Act in court, said last month that state attorneys general who believe bans on same-sex marriage are discriminatory should not feel compelled to defend them.