After a run of setbacks at the state level, gay rights advocates will take the campaign for same-sex marriage into a federal courtroom on Monday, starting down a treacherous avenue that ends at a U.S. Supreme Court dominated by conservatives.

“It’s a high-stakes poker move, no doubt about that,” said Jane Schacter, a professor of constitutional law at Stanford University. “I think the calculation for a long time has been that it’s hard to count five votes in favor of same-sex marriage on the current Supreme Court.”

Two couples are asking Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker to rule that same-sex marriage is a right embedded in the Constitution, and that it was violated last year when California voters passed a ballot measure confining matrimony to members of the opposite sex.

Read the rest of Karl Vick’s Washington Post article here.