(RNS) In three separate cases, three Pennsylvania county judges have ruled that marriages performed by ministers who do not have houses of worship or congregations are legal, rejecting a contrary 2007 ruling that had sowed statewide confusion.

All three suits were brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, which argued that York County Judge Maria Musti Cook was wrong to invalidate a marriage in 2007 because the minister who performed it was ordained online and did not have a physical church or congregation.

The celebrant, a friend of the couple, was ordained by the Seattle-based Universal Life Church, which offers near instantaneous, no-questions-asked ordinations online.

Though Cook’s ruling was limited to York County, registrars of wills across Pennsylvania began warning couples that their marriages may not be valid. In Bucks County, in suburban Philadelphia, for example, 36 couples remarried as a result of the York decision, said Barbara G. Reilly, the county clerk in charge of marriage registrations.

The ACLU challenged Cook’s decision, arguing that state law only requires ministers to belong to an established church to perform marriages. The ULC is an established church, they argued.

In a Dec. 31 decision, Bucks County Judge C. Theodore Fritsch Jr. agreed.

“To interpret `church’ as merely a physical place of worship would limit persons who are authorized to perform a marriage … to only those who preside over a group of worshippers in a specific building,” Fritsch wrote.

It would be “unjust” to disallow clergy without congregations, such as academics and hospital chaplains, from performing marriages, he added.

Fritsch’s ruling follows similar decisions by judges in Montgomery and Philadelphia counties. ACLU attorney, however, say the only way to “fix” the problem is to file suit in York County and have Cook’s decision reversed.