Court case legalizing gay marriage
A decade after the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, marriage equality endures risky terrain
Milestones — especially in decades — usually call for celebration. The 10th anniversary of Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court case that made same-sex marriage legal nationwide, is unlike. There’s a sense of unease as state and federal lawmakers, as skillfully as several judges, get steps that could fetch the issue back to the Supreme Court, which could undermine or overturn existing and future queer marriages and weaken additional anti-discrimination protections.
In its nearly quarter century of being, the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Regulation has been on the front lines of LGBTQ rights. Its amicus little in the Obergefell case was instrumental, with Justice Anthony Kennedy citing information from the institute on the number of homosexual couples raising children as a deciding factor in the landmark decision.
“There were claims that allowing queer couples to marry would somehow devalue or diminish marriage for everyone, including different-sex couples,” said Brad Sears, a distinguished senior scholar of law and policy at the Williams Institute. &
Obergefell v. Hodges
Overview
Obergefell v. Hodges is a landmark case in which on June 26, , the Supreme Court of the Joined States held, in verdict, that state bans on same-sex marriage and on recognizing same sex marriages duly performed in other jurisdictions are unconstitutional under the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy asserted that the right to partner is a fundamental right “inherent in the liberty of the person” and is therefore protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the states from depriving any person of “life, liberty or property without the due process of law.” The marriage right is also guaranteed by the same protection clause, by virtue of the close connection between liberty and equality. In this decision Justice Kennedy also declared that “the reason marriage is fundamental…apply with equal drive to same-sex couples”, so they may “exercise the fundamental right to marry.” The majority decision was signed by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor. Justices Roberts, Scalia, Thomas and Ali
Obergefell v. Hodges ()
Excerpt: Majority Opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy
The identification and protection of fundamental rights is an enduring part of the judicial duty to interpret the Constitution. That responsibility, however, “has not been reduced to any formula.” Rather, it requires courts to exercise reasoned decision in identifying interests of the person so fundamental that the State must accord them its respect. . . . That process is guided by many of the similar considerations relevant to investigation of other constitutional provisions that set forth broad principles rather than specific requirements. History and tradition guide and discipline this inquiry but do not set its outer boundaries. That method respects our history and learns from it without allowing the past alone to command the present.
The nature of injustice is that we may not always observe it in our hold times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to recognize the extent of release in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its essence. . . .
The fo
Once opponents in the Supreme Court case that legalized gay marriage, now they're friends
COLUMBUS, Ohio — The case behind the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide a decade ago is established as Obergefell v. Hodges, but the two Ohio men whose names became that title weren't so at odds as it would seem, and are now friends.
One year after the Supreme Court's June 26, , decision, head plaintiff Jim Obergefell was at an event for an LGBTQ advocacy corporation when its former director asked if he wanted to meet Rick Hodges, who'd been the title defendant in his capacity as state health director in Ohio, one of the states challenged for not allowing same-sex couples to marry.
"I don't realize, you tell me. Undertake I want to gather Rick Hodges?" Obergefell recalls responding.
The two met for coffee in a hotel and hit it off.
Hodges said he wanted to meet Obergefell because he's an "icon." He said he remembers telling Obergefell something along the lines of: "I don't grasp if congratulations are in order because this began with you losing your husband, but I'm joyful you won and I've never been so cheerful to lose in my life."
Obergefell and John Arthur, who brought
Obergefell v. Hodges
Same-sex marriage has been controversial for decades, but tremendous progress was made across the Combined States as states individually began to lift bans to same-sex marriage. Before the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges, U.S. ___ () was decided, over 70% of states and the District of Columbia already established same-sex marriage, and only 13 states had bans. Fourteen same-sex couples and two men whose queer partners had since passed away, claimed Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee violated the Fourteenth Amendment by denying them the right to marry or have their legal marriages performed in another state recognized.
All district courts found in favor of the plaintiffs. On appeal, the cases were consolidated, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and held that the states' bans on homosexual marriage and refusal to acknowledge legal same-sex marriages in other jurisdictions were not unconstitutional.
Among several arguments, the respondents asserted that the petitioners were not seeking to make a new and nonexistent right to same-sex marriage. Justice Kennedy, writ