UPDATE:
Gay rights groups have called for Alabama, one of 14 states that banned gay marriage, to immediately let couples get married.
The Human Rights Campaign on Friday sent a letter to Gov. Robert Bentley in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage across the United States.
HRC Legal Director Sarah Warbelow said it would be unlawful for the state to deny marriage rights to couples.
Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange said the decision overturned centuries of marriage tradition.
But Strange conceded the Supreme Court had the final say absent a change to the U.S. Constitution.
A federal judge in January ruled the state's gay marriage ban was unconstitutional, but the Alabama Supreme Court in March ordered probate judges to stop issuing marriage licenses to gay couples.
EARLIER STORY:
The Supreme Court has declared that same-sex couples have a right to marry anywhere in the United States.
Gay and lesbian couples already can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia.
The court's ruling on Friday means the remaining 14 states, in the South and Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans on same-sex marriage.
The outcome is the culmination of two decades of Supreme Court litigation over marriage, and gay rights generally.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, just as he did in the court's previous three major gay rights cases dating back to 1996.
