SALT LAKE CITY – More than 50 groups, organizations and coalitions have weighed in on gay-marriage cases in Utah and Oklahoma with supporting court briefs – giving a Denver-based federal appeals court thousands of pages of arguments to consider.

A total of 27 friend-of-the-court briefs urging the court to make gay marriage legal in the two states were submitted before the Tuesday midnight deadline. In addition to a group of Western Republicans and national associations of sociologists and psychologists, a brief was sent in by a conglomerate of 46 companies including Starbucks, Pfizer, eBay, Facebook, Google and Levi Strauss.

The businesses argue that state bans on gay marriage are bad for business, shouldering the companies with unnecessary costs and hampering their ability to recruit and retain top talent. They said denying same-sex couples the chance to marry goes against their core values and principles.

“We recognize the value of diversity, and we want to do business in jurisdictions that similarly understand the need for a society that enables all married persons to live with pride in themselves and their unions,” the brief says.

Last month, 26 supporting briefs were filed asking the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to uphold the ban on same-sex marriage. The overarching theme was that children should be raised by a man and woman, not gays and lesbians.

Hearings for the Utah and Oklahoma cases are set for mid-April before the Denver-based 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The judges must decide if they agree with federal judges in Utah and Oklahoma who ruled the state same-sex-marriage bans violate gay and lesbian couples’ constitutional rights.

The flood of amicus briefs would be abnormal for usual cases before a federal appeals court, but it has become commonplace as challenges to same-sex-marriage bans work through the courts, said Douglas NeJaime, a professor of law at the University of California, Irvine.

Many of the same groups that sent in arguments in these cases filed similar briefs in past cases in California that eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court, and will likely do the same as other cases reach appeals courts, NeJaime said.

“People are already lined up on both sides of this, and they know they are going to be filing these,” NeJaime said.

There have been a total of 53 amicus briefs filed so far in the Utah and Oklahoma cases – split nearly evenly on both sides. The briefs are about 45 pages on average, totaling 2,300 pages.