Two challenges to state laws (in Hawaii and Missouri) have succeeded, however.
These challenges will take decades to unfold, and may not succeed.
A legal challenge to group homes for the mentally ill has never succeeded on the Island, but local leaders keep trying.
Maxfield has not announced whether he will seek a third term in 2014 should his challenge succeed.
If the Supreme Court was unwilling to bar a similar practice in 1972, there is little reason to think a challenge would succeed today.
The three new ministers said their challenge had already succeeded by forcing the church to grapple with an issue it would rather defer.
It is not impossible that her challenge will succeed.
The ordinance is scheduled to take effect in July unless legal challenges succeed.
If the legal challenges succeed, school administrators agree, they could lead to radical changes in the state's financing of education.
But analysts and investors are dubious that his legal challenge will succeed.