Obergefell v. Hodges
| Obergefell v. Hodges | ||||
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| Negotiated April 28, 2015 |
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| Decided June 26th, 2015 |
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| Certiorari to clarify whether the United States Constitution requires states to permit and recognize same-sex marriages | ||||
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| The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution obliges states to allow marriages between two people of the same sex and to recognize marriages concluded elsewhere in their own territory. | ||||
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| Applied Law | ||||
| 14. Amendment to the United States Constitution |
Obergefell v. Hodges is the collective name for four cases before the United States Supreme Court for state recognition of same-sex marriage . Plaintiffs alleged that state authorities' refusal to allow or recognize same-sex marriages violated their fundamental rights protected by the United States Constitution. The Supreme Court endorsed this position on June 26, 2015 with a landmark ruling.
background
On July 19, 2013, James Obergefell filed a lawsuit with the United States District Court in Cincinnati, Ohio, seeking to oblige the state of Ohio to register him as the surviving widower on the death certificate in the event of the death of his critically ill spouse, John Arthur. The marriage was contracted in Maryland, where such marriages were permitted as of January 1, 2013. The lawsuit was against an amendment to the Ohio Constitution in 2004 that only allowed marriages between a man and a woman to be recognized by the state. Other similar proceedings, all of which were intended to result in state recognition of same-sex marriages in other states, were conducted in Tennessee and Kentucky and were consolidated in these proceedings.
The complaint of the lesbian nurses April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, also on behalf of their two adoptive sons, against Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan won the couple's approval for marriage and for the joint adoption of infants on an equal footing .
Legal starting position
The legislative competence to shape the marriage legislation is in the United States is not at the national level, but in principle in each of the individual states, so it is land thing .
The marriage law diverged across the country by 2015, especially in terms of coercion to different genders of the spouses . They ranged from the premise that two Unifying wedlock just before able to be had - their gender so did not matter - to the requirement that the marriage only in each case the union of a man and a woman is.
Until 2013, there was a federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act . This law outlawed the recognition of same-sex marriages at the federal level. The same was done by the now defendant federal laws, which had been passed since 2004 and ratified by the electorate with majorities of 59% to 81% - including national constitutional amendments. They explicitly forbade marriages between two men or two women and thus their state recognition locally:
"In order to secure and preserve the fruits of marriage for our society and future generations of children, only the union of a man and a woman in marriage will be recognized as a marriage contract or comparable contractual relationship for all purposes."
“Only a union of a man and a woman can be a marriage valid in this state or its parts or recognized by the state or its parts. This state and its parts will not create or recognize any legal status for unmarried individuals who intends to approximate the shape, quality, meaning or effect of marriage. "
“Only a man and woman marriage will be valued or recognized in Kentucky. A legal status for unmarried individuals that is the same or substantially similar to marriage will not be valid or recognized. "
“The traditional institute and contractual relationship that blesses the relationship between a man and a woman is the only legally recognized marriage contract relationship in this state. Any policy, legislation, or interpretation of the law intended to define marriage as anything other than the traditional institute and contractual relationship that blesses the relationship between a man and a woman is contrary to popular policy of that state and becomes void and unenforceable in Tennessee. If another state or a foreign legal system issues a marriage certificate to persons and it is prohibited in that state by the provisions of this section, it will be void and unenforceable in that state. "
Against the first-instance judgments that had the complainants each accorded their constitutional right to equal treatment, the affected four States submitted in autumn 2014 before the competent for her 6th Circuit Court of Appeals appeal a. With that they were successful. Martha Daughtrey, who was the only judge who did not endorse this ruling, speculated that her majority of colleagues might have wanted to open the way for a final ruling by the Supreme Court for a nationwide settlement of this question.
The submitted complaint was accepted for a decision by the highest court in early 2015.
Controversial legal issue
The Supreme Court had to rule on the question of whether the equal protection requirement of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States guaranteed same-sex couples equal protection from disadvantageous inequality, namely at the
- cross-border freedom of movement as a married couple and
- national freedom of access to marriage.
The former is about how a couple who got married in a state that allows same-sex marriage is treated in a state that does not. The second question is whether a same-sex couple is entitled to marry.
Tenor of the historic landmark judgment
The Supreme Court ruled on June 26, 2015 that the laws of the defendant states had indeed unconstitutionally and inappropriately deprived the complainants of unconstitutional freedoms, and urged all US states to recognize marriages in each other's states as well as access to the Married same-sex newlyweds are granted exactly the same legal framework.
Narrow pendulum swing
The presentation by Judge Rapporteur Anthony Kennedy (nominated by Ronald Reagan ) was in line with the assessment of the four Bill Clinton and Barack Obama nominated Judges Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan. The four judges nominated by Republican presidents Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts voted against it. The latter had their minority votes recorded individually.
Justification of the majority opinion
Kennedy's reasoning pathetically emphasized the great, long-standing and increasingly lovingly cultivated legal structure of the marital union, which is not threatened with any impairment by the complainant's request. Allowing same-sex marriage only removes a stubbornly defended legal blinker that denies the legitimacy of same-sex marriage, similar to the case of Loving v. Virginia . The 1967 ruling on this matter removed the prohibition of multiracial marriages. Same-sex marriage is also to be allowed beyond the end of life to secure the offspring and the family bond:
“No covenant is more profound than marriage. He unites in himself the highest ideals of love, loyalty, devotion, sacrifice and family. By entering into marriage, two people become greater than before. As some plaintiffs show us, marriage embodies a love so great that it even outlives death. To assume that these men and women do not respect the idea of marriage would not do them justice. They respect her, they respect her so much that they want that fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is that they are not doomed to live in solitude, excluded from one of the oldest institutions of civilization. They seek equal dignity before the law. The constitution guarantees them this right. This is how it is arranged. "
Justifications for minority opinions
The opposing voices all argued in the tenor that here a narrow majority of judges, overriding competence, overused the equal protection requirement in overpowering arbitrariness and deprived the electorate of their democratically constituted freedom of decision, instead of patiently holding back judicially and letting the legislative decision-making process run free. Marriage is traditionally defined as heterosexual and the judiciary has to follow the factual definitions of the legislature very carefully, instead of being subjectively colored, arrogantly idealizing, no one responsible, unelected 5-person sole government, the words of the constitution and the majority of voters in their freely chosen To patronize opinion.
For centuries it has been a matter of course for everyone that, even in the face of insufficient sexual attraction, the institute of heterosexual marriage ensures stable lifelong care for children. If now, of all things, hippiesque freedoms are to be approved by a marriage, that is not a gain, but an absolutely unrealistic hallucination .
The traditional ban on homosexual marriages is not an intrusive criminal provision to be defended against or any other unconstitutional circumcision of freedom, but merely a constitutionally compliant withholding of privileges, the overcoming of which the parliamentary majority can be convinced, but does not have to be persuaded.
The plaintiffs are also unmarried, lively, revealing and wealthy, and thus fundamentally unaffected.
The court misunderstood its freedom-preserving government defense mandate here as freedom-constructing government enforcement mandate.
As early as 1923, the Court of Justice had learned from the mistake of an excessive number of unauthorized legislative provisions and swore to abstain from legislation, whereas the current court majority endangered justice and freedom again by disobeying principles and wrested the freedom of religion and freedom of choice and the important political discussion from people's openness to results.
Pure innocuousness arguments necessarily dilute hard legal practice in favor of soft sociological theory that is not relevant to the subject.
The argumentation honoring homosexual marriage could just as well be used to justify a polyamorous or polygamous marriage claim.
With a castrating decree, the court had asserted a political goal of state-granted instead of the traditionally inherent human dignity. It is not resistant to populism and, contrary to the constitution and democratic self-determination, has put decision-making power into the judiciary with immeasurable consequences.
Web links
- www.supremecourt.gov (PDF)
- www.ca.uscourts.gov (PDF)
Individual evidence
- ↑ The wording of the judgment of the US Supreme Court: "No covenant is more profound than marriage" , Süddeutsche Zeitung. June 26, 2015. Accessed September 29, 2015.