Topeka ? A committee of the Kansas Board of Regents will soon start reviewing how the legalization of same-sex marriage could affect state universities.

Regent Fred Logan on Wednesday said he expects the U.S. Supreme Court to issue some kind of ruling later this year that will uphold a constitutional right for same-sex couples to marry.

“At a minimum, it seems to me they are going to require states to recognize marriages held in other states,” Logan said. “The other possibility is that they’ll just strike down state bans on same-sex marriage.”

Logan noted that the Supreme Court this week refused to hear an appeal in an Alabama case where a lower court had declared that state’s ban on gay marriage unconstitutional. But it has agreed to hear appeals in April involving cases from the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on marriage laws in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

Last year, the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has jurisdiction over federal courts in Kansas, struck down gay marriage bans in Utah and Oklahoma, and the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal in that case.

Since then, a federal judge in Kansas City has ordered that gay marriages can proceed in Douglas and Sedgwick counties. County officials in several other counties have also started granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples, although the state of Kansas still refuses to recognize those marriages.

A Supreme Court ruling to legalize same-sex marriage could have broad implications for universities, ranging from policies on student housing to health insurance and other employee benefits for university employees.