Just days after the Justice Department filed an appeal of a ruling declaring the federal ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, lawyers for a same-sex couple at the center of a bankruptcy dispute upped the ante by asking the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to take the case.

The Justice Department appealed the bankruptcy-court ruling Monday that declared the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional. Such appeals of bankruptcy-court decisions would be heard by the U.S. District Court.

But lawyers for the couple involved in the bankruptcy case are seeking to skip that step and go right to appeals court.