By RICHARD HACK — Palm Beach Clerk & Comptroller Sharon Bock is excited about her place in Florida history. Beginning January 6, her office will begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, barring any unexpected intervention by the Florida Supreme Court.

“We have been waiting for quite a long time, knowing this was going to come up. We are 100 percent ready to provide applications to all people that want to get married,” Bock said, adding that she will also be performing ceremonies as well. The attractive blonde joins 66 other county clerks and their offices that are expecting to be besieged by applicants when the first Tuesday in January rolls around.

Yet, despite the excitement, there is caution running just beneath the surface that can be felt when Bock adds that she intends to contact the Florida Association of Court Clerks and Comptrollers “to make certain that we are uniformly acting appropriately across the state.”

To switch from issuing licenses to male-female applicants to same-sex couples apparently isn’t quite as simple as some would hope. For one thing, the applications themselves need to be “gender-neutral.” Currently, they are not.

The exact wording of marriage licenses in Florida is up to the individual court clerks that are issuing the document. Hampton Peterson, who is Bock’s general counsel, told the Daily Business Review that clerks across the state have been preparing for the move ever since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act on June 26, 2013.

Peterson said that the current form refers to “a bride and a groom,” two categories that would ultimately be altered to read “spouse.” Though not widely known, it is Florida’s Department of Health that actually produces the certificates.

“I do not know if they have prepared anything to have those changes made,” Peterson said.

Adding to the uncertainty is a memo that was sent last July by attorneys John Londot, Hope Keating and Michael Moody in the Tallahassee office of law firm Greenberg Traurig. The firm represents the Florida Association of Court Clerks and Comptrollers.

According to that memo, “If a trial court declares Florida’s same-sex marriage law ban unconstitutional, the decision is technically binding only upon the parties to the suit, but is otherwise not mandatory for clerks who are not named as defendants. Thus, ordinarily, clerks in other jurisdictions may consider it prudent, but not necessary, to follow the example of the deciding court.”

While pointing to the various state statutes that govern the issuing of same-sex marriage licenses, the memo stated that it “is a misdemeanor of the first degree, punishable by imprisonment of not more than one year and a fine of not more than $1,000.” According to Greenburg Traurig, “clerks who are not named defendants and who issue licenses to same-sex couples may be susceptible to a charge of violating criminal law.”

Howard Simon, executive director of the ACLU of Florida, told the Miami Herald that much has happened since July in Florida.

“I don’t want to say the memo is wrong, but the world changed since that memo was written.” The ACLU sued the state on behalf of its client, the gay-rights group SAVE, and same-sex couples who were legally married in other states only to have their marriages not recognized in Florida. In that case, among the defendants was the clerk of the court in Washington County.

The date of January 6 was decided by U.S. District Judge Robert Lewis Hinkle, who last August ruled that the state’s ban on gay marriage was unconstitutional, but granted a temporary stay in same-sex marriages until January 5 in deference to the state, which appealed to the Eleventh Circuit.

On December 3, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit denied a request by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to extend that stay freeing same-sex marriages to begin at the time.

Broward County Clerk of the Court Howard Forman said that his office was prepared for a rush of applicants on January 6, while Monroe Country Clerk Amy Heavilin intends to become the first clerk in Florida to marry a gay couple, keeping her office open past midnight on Jan.5 to celebrate with gays and lesbians in Key West.

All the while, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi is continuing to weigh her options, refusing to say she’s out of options to stop history in the making.

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