Facts of the Case
Obergefell pressed the Ohio registrar to identify him as the surviving spouse on his partner’s death certificate based on their marriage in Maryland. The Ohio Registrar agreed that discrimination against same-sex couples was unconstitutional, but the state’s attorney supported the ban on same-sex marriage.
Case History
James Obergefell and John Arthur married in Maryland in July 2013 following the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in United States v. Windsor. Upon learning that their state of residence in Ohio would not recognize their marriage, they filed suit in the United States Southern District Court of Ohio (Hodges, 2019). The Court granted their claim, believing that the state, in fact, annulling a marriage concluded in another jurisdiction invades the people’s privacy. The decision was appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, holding that Ohio’s ban on same-sex marriage did not violate the U.S. Constitution. In November 2014, the Obergefell case entered the U.S. Supreme Court and was joined with other lawsuits from Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
Legal Issues to be Decided by the Court
The Court identified two crucial legal issues that it had to answer during the debate.
- Does the Fourteenth Amendment require marriage licenses for same-sex couples?
- Does the Fourteenth Amendment require that two people of the same sex be allowed to marry if their marriage is out of state?
Since the Court found that the plaintiffs only answered questions in their own case, the issue in the Obergefell case was the recognition of marriage licenses in other jurisdictions.
Court Opinion
On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs by a vote of five to four. Anthony Kennedy noted that the plaintiffs were convinced of their reverence for marriage, which represents the love that can endure even after death (Balkin, 2021). Kennedy argued that same-sex couples cannot be excluded from the institution of marriage, since the constitution guarantees them the appropriate rights.
Dissenting Opinions
Chief Justice Roberts, who believed that the ban on same-sex marriage did not violate the Constitution, disagreed with the majority decision. He criticized colleagues’ decisions for relying on moral convictions rather than legal rules (Balkin, 2021). He criticized the majority for misusing the judicial system. Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Samuel Alito also did not support the majority decision and wrote dissenting opinions.
References
Balkin, J. M. (2021). What Obergefell v. Hodges should have said: The nation’s top legal experts rewrite America’s same-sex marriage decision. Yale University Press.
Hodges, O. V. (2019). Obergefell v. Hodges. In J. Pierceson (Ed.), LGBTQ Americans in the US political system: An encyclopedia of activists, voters, candidates, and officeholders [2 volumes], (p. 315) ABC-CLIO.