[Lurking Libertarian]

No, Sotomayor didn't grant the stay on her own. She could have denied the stay on her own, but she chose to refer the stay request to the whole court. If she had denied the stay request, Utah would have had the right to submit it to a second justice of their choice per standard SCOTUS procedure. Utah would have chosen Scalia or Thomas. Either could, and likely would, have granted the stay or referred it to the whole court as Sotomayor did. Sotomayor just circumvented that second stay request because she knew it was inevitable and simply referred it to the whole court herself rather than make Utah go through the legal motions. IMHO, this is not indicative of her position in any way and is not a surprise. LL may or may not have more to offer by way of legal procedure, etc.

What you wrote is correct. Every request for a stay goes first to the Justice assigned to that Circuit; if that Justice denies a stay, a party can, in theory, keep asking one Justice after another until they've asked all 9.

In practice, every time a request is made to a second Justice-- and almost every first request in a high-profile or controversial case-- the Justice who gets the request will ask the full court to decide it (as Sotomayor did here). That is simply to save time, because in those situations it's clear that multiple requests are going to be made.

What I do think is significant is that there was no recorded dissent from the grant of a stay in this case.

[BuckeyeTexan]

What I do think is significant is that there was no recorded dissent from the grant of a stay in this case.

Do tell? Is it common to see such dissents or is it that you expected ideological lines to be drawn this early with respect to a stay request for same-sex marriage?