Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
On 30 September 2011, Justice Johnson Lam of the Court of First Instance of the High Court (CFI) ruled in Vallejos' case that existing legislation restricting FDHs from qualifying for permanent residence contravened the Hong Kong Basic Law. Lam also found that Vallejos and Domingo, but not the three other applicants, had fulfilled the condition of taking Hong Kong as their only permanent home and being ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for seven years. The Court of Appeal of the High Court overturned the CFI's decision on Vallejos' case on 28 March 2012. Vallejos and Domingo then jointly appealed to the Court of Final Appeal (CFA), which heard their case on 26–28 February 2013; the CFA rejected their appeal on 25 March 2013.
Sevcik v. Sandoval
Attorneys for the plaintiffs filed an appeal on December 3, 2012 with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Court originally planned to hear the case on a parallel track with a similar Hawaii same-sex marriage case, "Jackson v. Abercrombie", until Hawaii's legalization of same-sex marriage as of December 2, 2013, mooted that case. The Court placed the case on hold pending the Supreme Court rulings in "Hollingsworth v. Perry" and "United States v. Windsor" on June 26, 2013. The Coalition for the Protection of Marriage on December 5, 2012, filed a petition for certiorari before judgment with the Supreme Court, asking that court to take up the case without waiting for action by the Court of Appeals. The Supreme Court denied that petition on June 27, 2013. On October 18, 2013, Lambda Legal filed its opening brief. On January 21, 2014, the state of Nevada submitted its reply brief. On January 24, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto announced she was reviewing the state's brief because the Ninth Circuit's decision in "SmithKline Beecham Corporation v. Abbott Laboratories" on January 21 established that laws that make a distinction based on sexual orientation are subject to "heightened scrutiny", making the arguments that state had made based on the less demanding "rational basis" standard "likely no longer tenable in the Ninth Circuit." On February 10, Masto withdrew the state's brief defending Nevada's ban on same-sex marriage. Governor Sandoval agreed: "It has become clear that this case is no longer defensible in court". On February 12, 2014, the Ninth Circuit issued an order vacating the previous order scheduling the "Sevcik" and "Jackson" cases together.