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Supreme Court Bolsters Gay Marriage With Two Major Rulings Supreme Court Bolsters Gay Marriage With Two Major Rulings
(about 4 hours later)
WASHINGTON — In a pair of major victories for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that married same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits and, by declining to decide a case from California, effectively allowed same-sex marriages there.WASHINGTON — In a pair of major victories for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that married same-sex couples were entitled to federal benefits and, by declining to decide a case from California, effectively allowed same-sex marriages there.
The rulings leave in place laws banning same-sex marriage around the nation, and the court declined to say whether there was a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. But in clearing the way for same-sex marriage in California, the nation’s most populous state, the court effectively increased to 13 the number of states that allow such unions. The rulings leave in place laws banning same-sex marriage around the nation, and the court declined to say whether there was a constitutional right to such unions. But in clearing the way for same-sex marriage in California, the nation’s most populous state, the court effectively increased to 13 the number of states that allow it.
The decision on federal benefits will immediately extend many benefits to couples in the states where same-sex marriage is legal, and it will give the Obama administration the ability to broaden other benefits through executive actions. The decisions will only intensify the fast-moving debate over same-sex marriage, and the clash in the Supreme Court reflected one around the nation.
The ruling striking down the federal Defense of Marriage Act will immediately extend many benefits to couples in the states where same-sex marriage is legal, and it will give the Obama administration the ability to broaden other benefits through executive actions.
The case concerning California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8, was decided on technical grounds, with the majority saying that it was not properly before the court. Because officials in California had declined to appeal a trial court’s decision against them and because the proponents of Proposition 8 were not entitled to step into the state’s shoes to appeal the decision, the court said, it was powerless to issue a decision. That left in place a trial court victory for two same-sex couples who had sought to marry.The case concerning California’s ban on same-sex marriage, Proposition 8, was decided on technical grounds, with the majority saying that it was not properly before the court. Because officials in California had declined to appeal a trial court’s decision against them and because the proponents of Proposition 8 were not entitled to step into the state’s shoes to appeal the decision, the court said, it was powerless to issue a decision. That left in place a trial court victory for two same-sex couples who had sought to marry.
The decision on the federal law was 5 to 4, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy writing the majority opinion, which the four liberal-leaning justices joined. The decision on the federal law was decided by 5 to 4, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy writing the majority opinion. He was joined by the four members of the court’s liberal wing.
“The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.” “The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the state, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.”
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. was in the minority, as were Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. He said the law was motivated by a desire to harm gay and lesbian couples and their families, demeaning the “moral and sexual choices” of such couples and humiliating “tens of thousands of children now being raised by same-sex couples.”
The ruling overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed with bipartisan support and which President Bill Clinton signed. The constitutional basis for striking down the law was not entirely clear, as it had elements of federalism, equal protection and due process. Justice Kennedy said the law’s basic flaw was in its “deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”
The decision will raise a series of major questions for the Obama administration about how aggressively to overhaul references to marriage throughout the many volumes that lay out the laws of the United States. He added that the ruling applied only to marriages in states that allow gay and lesbian couples to marry.
The five-member majority in the California case was different from the one in the Defense of Marriage case, in a sign that the California case was less straightforward. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justice Scalia, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice Stephen G. Breyer and Justice Elena Kagan. Justice Antonin Scalia, who read a withering dissent from the bench, said that last declaration took “real cheek.”
“In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us,” Justice Scalia wrote in his dissent in the case on the federal law. “The truth is more complicated.” “By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency,” Justice Scalia said, “the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition.”
Justice Scalia read from his dissent on the bench, a step justices take in a small share of cases, typically to show that they have especially strong views. Exactly 10 years ago, Justice Scalia issued a similar dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down laws making gay sex a crime. He predicted that the ruling would lead to the legal recognition of same-sex marriage, and he turned out to be right.
Justice Kennedy, in his opinion, wrote that the law was “unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.” The court’s four more conservative justices — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Justice Scalia and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. — issued three dissents between them in the case on the federal law. They differed in some of their rationales and predictions, but all agreed that the court should not have heard the case and that the law, which passed with bipartisan support and which President Bill Clinton signed, was constitutional.
If California becomes the 13th state to legalize same-sex marriage, about 30 percent of Americans will live in jurisdictions where it is legal. Until last year, when four states voted in favor of same-sex marriage at the ballot box, it had failed — or bans on it had succeeded — every time it had appeared on a statewide initiative. Chief Justice Roberts said that he “would not tar the political branches with the brush of bigotry,” and that “interests in uniformity and stability amply justified Congress’s decision” in 1996, which, “at that point, had been adopted by every state in our nation, and every nation in the world.”
Opponents of same-sex marriage have said that they remain hopeful that they can mount a political comeback, much as opponents of abortion used Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision, as a springboard to a more aggressive movement. Brian Brown, the head of the National Organization for Marriage, vowed Wednesday after the rulings to push for a federal constitutional ban on same-sex marriage. Justice Scalia wrote that the majority had simplified a complex question that should be decided democratically and not by judges.
“In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us,” he wrote. “The truth is more complicated.”
The decision will raise a series of major questions for the Obama administration about how to overhaul federal programs involving marriage. Justice Scalia noted some of the difficult problems created by the decision, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307. "Imagine a pair of women who marry in Albany and then move to Alabama," he wrote. May they file a joint federal income tax return? Does the answer turn on where they were married or where they live?
The California case was also decided by 5 to 4, but with a different and very unusual alignment of justices. Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion declining to rule on the constitutionality of Proposition 8. He was joined by Justice Scalia and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer and Elena Kagan.
Chief Justice Roberts said the failure of officials in California to appeal the trial court decision against them was the end of the matter. Proponents of Proposition 8 had suffered only a "generalized grievance" when the ballot initiative they had sponsored was struck down, the chief justice wrote, and they were not entitled to represent the state's interests on appeal. The ruling in the case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144, erased the appeals court’s decision striking down Proposition 8.
As a formal matter, the decision sent the case back to the appeals court, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, “with instructions to dismiss the appeal for lack of jurisdiction.” That means the trial court’s decision stands.
Lawyers for the two sides had different interpretations of the legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s ruling. Supporters of Proposition 8 said it remained the law in California, while their adversaries said the trial court's decision struck it down. As a practical matter, Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, instructed officials there to start issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples as soon as the Ninth Circuit acts.
If California becomes the 13th state to allow same-sex marriage, about 30 percent of Americans will live in jurisdictions where it is legal. Until last year, when four states voted in favor of same-sex marriage at the ballot box, it had failed — or bans on it had succeeded — every time it had appeared on a statewide initiative.
Opponents of same-sex marriage have said that they remain hopeful that they can mount a political comeback, much as opponents of abortion used Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision establishing a constitutional right to abortion, as a springboard to a more aggressive movement. Brian S. Brown, the president of the National Organization for Marriage, vowed Wednesday after the rulings to push for a federal constitutional ban on same-sex marriage.
Gay rights advocates said they would continue pushing to legalize same-sex marriage in new states.Gay rights advocates said they would continue pushing to legalize same-sex marriage in new states.
The case on the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307, considered the part of the law that defines marriage as the union of a man and a woman for purposes of federal benefits. (A different part of the law, allowing states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages from other states, was not before the court.) The case on the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307, concerned two New York City women, Edith Windsor and Thea Clara Spyer, who married in 2007 in Canada. Ms. Spyer died in 2009, and Ms. Windsor inherited her property. The 1996 law did not allow the Internal Revenue Service to treat Ms. Windsor as a surviving spouse, and she faced a tax bill of about $360,000 that a spouse in an opposite-sex marriage would not have had to pay. Ms. Windsor sued, and last year the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, struck down the 1996 law.
The case concerned two New York City women, Edith Windsor and Thea Clara Spyer, who married in 2007 in Canada. Ms. Spyer died in 2009, and Ms. Windsor inherited her property. The 1996 law did not allow the Internal Revenue Service to treat Ms. Windsor as a surviving spouse, and she faced a tax bill of about $360,000 that a spouse in an opposite-sex marriage would not have had to pay. Ms. Windsor sued, and last year the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, struck down the 1996 law.
Until 2011, the Justice Department defended the law in court, as it typically does all acts of Congress. That year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that he and President Obama had concluded that the law was unconstitutional and unworthy of defense in court, but that the administration would continue to enforce the law. After the Justice Department stepped aside, House Republicans intervened to defend the law. Although the administration’s position prevailed in the lower courts, the Justice Department filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, saying the final decision should come from the highest court.Until 2011, the Justice Department defended the law in court, as it typically does all acts of Congress. That year, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that he and President Obama had concluded that the law was unconstitutional and unworthy of defense in court, but that the administration would continue to enforce the law. After the Justice Department stepped aside, House Republicans intervened to defend the law. Although the administration’s position prevailed in the lower courts, the Justice Department filed an appeal to the Supreme Court, saying the final decision should come from the highest court.
The case on Proposition 8, the 2008 California voter initiative that banned same-sex marriage there, was filed in 2009 by Theodore B. Olson and David Boies on behalf a two same-sex couples who sought to marry. The two lawyers argued on opposite sides in Bush v. Gore, the Supreme Court case that settled the 2000 presidential election. The two sides in Wednesday’s decision differed on whether the case’s odd procedural posture deprived the court of jurisdiction, much as the machinations in the Proposition 8 case had. Justice Kennedy said the federal government retained a stake in the case, as it has not paid Ms. Windsor. It helped, he said, that the lawyers for House Republicans had made "a sharp adversarial presentation of the issues." Because “the rights and privileges of hundreds of thousands of persons” were at stake, Justice Kennedy wrote, it was urgent that the court act.
A judge in San Francisco struck down Proposition 8 in a broad ruling whose logic would apply to bans around the nation. California officials did not appeal the ruling. The dissenters said there was no real controvery, as the government and Ms. Windsor agreed that the law was unconstitutional, and that the Supreme Court was therefore without power to issue a decision.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that proponents of Proposition 8 had standing to appeal the judgment against the state. The court then affirmed the trial judge’s decision but on a narrower ground, saying voters were not entitled to withdraw a constitutional right once it had been established by the State Supreme Court. That reasoning did not directly threaten bans in other states.
In their brief in the Supreme Court, supporters of Proposition 8 said that preserving the traditional definition of marriage would “further society’s vital interests in responsible procreation and child rearing.” Those interests would be undermined, they say, by “officially redefining marriage as a genderless institution.” They urged the Supreme Court to proceed with caution in changing the definition of marriage and to respect societal judgments made through the democratic process.
Supporters of same-sex marriage responded that allowing gay and lesbian couples to wed would not make it any more likely that straight couples would act irresponsibly. They added that courts must protect the fundamental rights of disfavored minorities.
The Obama administration urged the Supreme Court to strike down Proposition 8, focusing on a ground that it said would apply to California and seven other states. It violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause, the administration’s brief said, to confer all the benefits and burdens of marriage on gay and lesbian couples through robust civil union or domestic partnership laws but withhold the label “marriage.”
The Proposition 8 case is Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144.