Obergefell vs Hodges 576 US 2015

FACTS: Ohio Case

Jim Obergefell and John Arthur met two decades ago. In 2011, John was diagnosed with ALS. They then decided to get married in 2013 by travelling from Ohio to Maryland where same­sex marriage was legal.

Three months later, Arthur died. Ohio law does not permit Obergefell to be listed as the surviving spouse on Arthur’s death certificate.

He brought suit to be shown as the surviving spouse on Arthur’s death certificate. Michigan Case

April DeBoer and Jane Rowse adopted three children. However, Michigan only allowed opposite­sex couples and single individuals to adopt.

Thus, each child was considered to only have one parent. If tragedy were to befall either DeBoer or Rowse, the other would have no legal rights over the children she had not been permitted to adopt.

Thus, they brought suit to seek relief from the uncertainty that their unmarried status created. Tennessee Case

IjpeDeKoe received orders to be deployed to Afghanistan. Before leaving, he married his partner Thomas Kostura in New York.

They later settled in Tennessee, where the lawful marriage was stripped from them. The legal tie returns and disappears as they cross state lines. Thus, they brought suit.

On the History of Marriage

Until the mid­20th century, same­sex intimacy long had been condemned as immoral by the state itself in most Western nations.

In the late 20th century, following substantial cultural and political developments, same­sex couples began to lead more open and public lives and to establish families.

Bowers v. Hardwick: upheld the constitutionality of a Georgia law deemed to criminalize certain homosexual acts.

Romer v. Evans:the Court invalidated an amendment to Colorado’s Constitution that sought to foreclose any branch or political subdivision of the State from protecting persons against discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Lawrence v. Texas: The Court invalidated Bowers in 2003, holding that laws making same­sex intimacy a crime “demean the lives of homosexual persons.”

In Baehr vs. Lewin(1993), the Hawaii Supreme Court decided that Hawaii’s law restricting marriage to opposite­sex couples constituted a classification on the basis of sex and was therefore subject to strict scrutiny under the Hawaii Constitution.

o As a response, other states sought to reaffirm traditional marriage. The US Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996.

Goodridgev. Department of Public Health: the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts held the State’s Constitution guaranteed same­sex couples the right to marry.

US v. Windsor:the Supreme Court invalidated the DOMA.

ISSUES: ROJAS, Rina --- SABANDO, Fydah Marie

Obergefell vs Hodges 576 US 2015

Whether or not the Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex. YES. Whether or not the Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to recognize a same­ sex marriage licensed and performed in a State which does grant that right. YES.

RULING:

Under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, no State shall “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

The Court has long held the right to marry is protected by the Constitution. In Loving v. Virginia, it was held that marriage was “one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.”

Over time and in other contexts, the Court has reiterated that the right to marry is fundamental under the Due Process Clause. There are four principles that can be drawn from these precedents.

First Principle: The right to personal choice regarding marriage is inherent in the concept of individual autonomy.

o Like choices concerning contraception, family relationships, procreation, and childrearing, all of which are protected by the Constitution, decisions concerning marriage are among the most intimate that an individual can make.

The nature of marriage is that, through its enduring bond, two persons together can find other freedoms, such as expression, intimacy, and spirituality.

o This is true for all persons, whatever their sexual orientation. Second Principle: The right to marry is fundamental because it supports a two­person union unlike

any other in its importance to the committed individuals. o Marriage responds to the universal fear that a lonely person might call out only to find no

one there. It offers the hope of companionship and understanding and assurance that while both still live there will be someone to care for the other.

Third Principle: it safeguards children and families and thus draws meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education.

o Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser.

o An ability, desire, or promise to procreate is not and has not been a prerequisite for a valid marriage in any State.

Fourth Principle: “this Court’s cases and the Nation’s traditions make clear that marriage is a keystone of our social order.”

Marriage has been the basis of an expanding list of rights. By virtue of their exclusion from that institution, same­sex couples are denied benefits that the States have linked to marriage.

There is a fundamental inconsistency between limiting marriage to opposite­sex couples and the right to marry.

The petitioners are not asking for a “non­existent right” for same­sex couples to marry; they are asking for the comprehensive right to marry.

The right to marry is fundamental as a matter of history and tradition, but rights come not from ancient sources alone.

o In interpreting the Equal Protection Clause, the Court has recognized that new insights and societal understandings can reveal unjustified inequality within our most fundamental institutions that once passed unnoticed and unchallenged.

Denial to same­sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them.

On the argument that there must be further legislation, litigation, and debate: There have been referenda, legislative debates, and grassroots campaigns, as well as countless studies, papers, books, and other popular and scholarly writings.

ROJAS, Rina --- SABANDO, Fydah Marie

Obergefell vs Hodges 576 US 2015

o Schuette v. BAMN:when the rights of persons are violated, “the Constitution requires redress by the courts,” notwithstanding the more general value of democratic decision making.

Individuals need not await legislative action before asserting a fundamental right. Being married in one State but having that valid marriage denied in another is one of “the most

perplexing and distressing complication[s]” in the law of domestic relations.

DISSENTING OPINIONS:

Roberts, dissenting: The Court is not a legislature. It says what the law is, not what it should be. The people of a State are free to expand marriage to include same­sex couples, or to retain the

historic definition. The majority’s decision is an act of will, not legal judgment. The right it announces has no basis in

the Constitution or this Court’s precedent. o As a result, the Court invalidates the marriage laws of more than half the States and orders

the transformation of a social institution that has formed the basis of human society for millennia.

The majority neglects that restrained conception of the judicial role. It seizes for itself a ques­tion the Constitution leaves to the people, at a time when the people are engaged in a vibrant debate on that question.

The universal definition of marriage as the union of a man and a woman is no historical coincidence. o It arose in the nature of things to meet a vital need: ensuring that children are conceived by

a mother and father committed to raising them in the stable conditions of a lifelong relationship.

Every State at the founding—and every State throughout our history until a dozen years ago—defined marriage in the traditional, biologically rooted way.

The precedent cited by the majority did not, however, work any transformation in the core structure of marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

Why not grant the same right to polyamorous relationships too? Petitioners failed to cite any substantial difference that would merit a different legal analysis.

“Indeed, however heartened the proponents of same­sex marriage might be on this day, it is worth acknowledging what they have lost, and lost forever: the opportunity to win the true acceptance that comes from persuading their fellow citizens of the justice of their cause.”

Scalia, dissenting:

The public debate over same­sex marriage must be allowed to continue. What the majority did is to lay “naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed,super­legislative—power;

a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.” “But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today’s judicial Putsch.” (i.e. the majority “knows

better” than the legal minds that preceded them; “The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic.”)

Thomas, dissenting:

By straying from the text of the Constitution, substantive due process exalts judges at the expense of the People from whom they derive their authority.

To justify the use of the due process argument, one must identify the liberty being taken away. The ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment almost uniformly construed the word “liberty” to refer

only to freedom from physical restraint. o Even assuming that the “liberty” in those Clauses en­ compasses something more than

freedom from physical restraint, it would not include the types of rights claimed by the majority.

ROJAS, Rina --- SABANDO, Fydah Marie

Obergefell vs Hodges 576 US 2015

o In the American legal tradition, liberty has long been understood as individual freedomfrom governmental action, not as a right to a particular governmental entitlement.

The majority likewise undermines religious freedom. The majority opinion and religious liberty will come into conflict, particularly as individuals and churches are confronted with demands to participate in and endorse civil marriages between same­sex couples.

Alito, dissenting:

Same­sex marriage is not included in the liberties protected by the due process clause. It lacks deep roots and that it is contrary to long­established tradition.

For millennia, marriage was inextricably linked to the one thing that only an opposite­sex couple can do: procreate.

Today’s decision shows that decades of attempts to restrain this Court’s abuse of its authority have failed.

CONTRADICTIONS: AS TO NATURAL LAW

1. IT IS NOT MARRIAGE ­ Aman and a womanwanting to marry may be different in their characteristics: one may be black, the other white; one rich, the other poor; or one tall, the other short. None of these differences are insurmountable obstacles to marriage. The two individuals are still man and woman, and thus the requirements of nature are respected. ­ Same­sex “marriage” opposes nature. Two individuals of the same sex, regardless of their race, wealth, stature, erudition or fame, will never be able to marry because of an insurmountable biological impossibility.

2. NEGATES PRESERVATION OF SPECIES ­ Sexual Relationships are a part of the marital relationship, because the ‘natural outcome’ of sex

is children. ­ It denies the specific primary purpose of marriage: the perpetuation of the human race and the

raising of children.

3. VIOLATES NATURAL LAW ­“good is to be done and pursued, and evil is to be avoided.” By his natural reason, man can perceive what is morally good or bad for him. Thus, he can know the end or purpose of each of his acts and how it is morally wrong to transform the means that help him accomplish an act into the act’s purpose. ­ Any situation which institutionalizes the circumvention of the purpose of the sexual act violates natural law and the objective norm of morality.

ROJAS, Rina --- SABANDO, Fydah Marie

Obergefell vs Hodges 576 US 2015

­ Being rooted in human nature, natural law is universal and immutable. It applies to the entire human race, equally. It commands and forbids consistently. 4. IT TURNS A MORAL WRONG INTO A CIVIL RIGHT ­A man and a womanwanting to marry may be different in their characteristics: one may be black, the other white; one rich, the other poor; or one tall, the other short. None of these differences are insurmountable obstacles to marriage. The two individuals are still man and woman, and thus the requirements of nature are respected. ­ Same­sex “marriage” opposes nature. Two individuals of the same sex, regardless of their race, wealth, stature, erudition or fame, will never be able to marry because of an insurmountable biological impossibility.

ROJAS, Rina --- SABANDO, Fydah Marie