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During the 2016 presidential campaign, an image macro circulated online holding that Mike Pence, the governor of Indiana and Republican vice presidential nominee, had signed a state bill in 2013 that allowed same-sex couples to be jailed simply for applying for marriage licenses: Indiana House Bill 1006, as it was known, amended the Indiana Code to downgrade the classification of various offenses, including knowingly furnish[ing] false information to a clerk of the circuit court while applying for a marriage license, from Class D to Level 6 felonies, in accordance with the state's revised classification system for felonies. This action neither created a new law nor specified a harsher penalty for the existing law. However, the revisions also included a clause that spurred concerns that it would be applicable to, and penalize, anyone who performed a same-sex wedding ceremony: As Mic noted at the time, the new law was widely misreported as being specific to same-sex couples: Moreover, legal writers have challenged the suggestion that the law could effectively be applied to penalize any same-sex couple who simply applied for a marriage license: Same-sex marriage has been legal in Indiana since 6 October 2014, when the Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal in the case of Baskin v. Bogan. We contacted the Indiana state attorney general's office on 9 November 2016 to confirm whether any same-sex couples have indeed been prosecuted under the terms of HB 1006 but have yet to hear back.
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