The Church in Wales (EyN) is not an established (i.e. state) church. The EyN was both disestablished and split off from the CofE under the Welsh Church Act a century ago, however it retains some of the obligations of an established church which could be affected by a change in the law to allow gay marriage.

Established churches like the CofE, Church of Denmark and (in Italy) the Roman Catholic Chuch are considered state agencies, which partly excludes them from European laws guaranteeing religious liberty. This means that it is theoretically possible for a gay couple to take the CofE to the European Court of Human Rights, on the basis that as a government agency the CofE has a legal obligation to solemnise a government-sanctioned marriage.

However this is not the case for formally disestablished churches like the EyN, as they get the same protections as other non-established religious groups, so the EyN was investigating taking the British government to the European Court of Human Rights over the potential ban, on the basis that it would infringe the church’s right to choose whether or not to conduct gay marriages. Consequently the current form of the bill now has a section which explicitly protects the EyN’s right to make that choice itself.