Constitutional Law

California Supreme Court Rules Lesbian and Gay Couples Have Right To Marry

California’s Supreme Court ruled 4-3 today that the state may no longer exclude same-sex couples from civil marriage.  In In re Marriage Cases, a consolidation of the cases brought on behalf of 14 same-sex couples as well as the City of San Francisco under the California state constitution, the Court ruled that the marriage ban violates the state’s fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship and the state constitution’s equal protection clause.

The court ordered the offending language barring same-sex marriage stricken from the statute, and directed county clerks and other local officials to perform their duty to enforce the marriage statutes accordingly. Quotes from key sections of the ruling are available here.

According to the controlling opinion:

Our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibility to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation, and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.

We conclude that, under this state’s Constitution, the constitutionally based right to marry properly must be understood to encompass the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage that are so integral to an individual’s liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the Legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process. These core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish — with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life — an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity according a union traditionally designated as marriage.

“The court’s decision today upheld the highest ideals of fairness and opportunity that are embodied in the California Constitution,” said Shannon Price Minter, Legal Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who argued the case on behalf of 14 same-sex couples and two organizations, Equality California and Our Family Coalition.

Currently, lesbian and gay couples may legally marry in Massachusetts, Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and South Africa. In 2007, an Iowa trial court held that Iowa’s marriage ban violates the Iowa Constitution. That case is now before the Iowa Supreme Court. A lawsuit challenging the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage in Connecticut is also pending before the Connecticut Supreme Court. 

Anticipating this ruling, opponents of same-sex gay marriage are attempting to amend the California Constitution to discriminate against lesbian and gay couples. A group funded by numerous out-of-state interests hopes to qualify an initiative on the November ballot that would ask voters to alter the constitution by denying gay and lesbian couples the freedom to marry, which the court upheld today. The California Secretary of State has not yet determined if the initiative has qualified for the November ballot.

Full post as published by ACS Blog on May 15, 2008 (boomark / email).