Another episode in the long legal saga of California's same-sex marriage ban is scheduled to unfold in a San Francisco courtroom.

A federal appeals court plans to hear oral arguments Thursday on whether a lower court judge who ultimately struck down voter-approved Proposition 8 should have recused himself because he was in a same-sex relationship.

The three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also will weigh if it should unseal video recordings of last year's landmark trial on the voter-approved ban's constitutionality.

The panel is not expected to rule immediately on either issue. But both topics need to be argued before the court can issue a decision either upholding or overturning the ban.