WASHINGTON — In a long-sought victory for the gay rights
movement, the Supreme Court ruled by a 5-to-4 vote on Friday that the
Constitution guarantees a right to same-sex marriage.
“No longer may this liberty be denied,” Justice Anthony M.
Kennedy wrote for the majority in the historic decision. “No union is more
profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity,
devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become
something greater than once they were.”
The decision, which was the culmination of decades of
litigation and activism, set off jubilation and tearful embraces across the
country, the first same-sex marriages in several states, and signs of
resistance — or at least stalling — in others. It came against the backdrop of
fast-moving changes in public opinion, with polls indicating that most
Americans now approve of the unions.
The court’s four more liberal justices joined Justice
Kennedy’s majority opinion. Each member of the court’s conservative wing filed
a separate dissent, in tones ranging from resigned dismay to bitter scorn. In dissent, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the
Constitution had nothing to say on the subject of same-sex marriage.
Gay rights supporters celebrate after the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled that the U.S. Constitution provides same-sex couples the right to marry,
outside the Supreme Court building in Washington, June 26, 2015.
“If you are among the many Americans — of whatever sexual
orientation — who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate
today’s decision,” Chief Justice Roberts wrote. “Celebrate the achievement of a
desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a
partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not celebrate the
Constitution. It had nothing to do with it.”
In a second dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia mocked the
soaring language of Justice Kennedy, who has become the nation’s most important
judicial champion of gay rights.
“The opinion is couched in a style that is as pretentious as its content is egotistic,” Justice Scalia wrote of his colleague’s work. “Of course the opinion’s showy profundities are often profoundly incoherent.”
As Justice Kennedy finished announcing his opinion from the
bench on Friday, several lawyers seated in the bar section of the court’s
gallery wiped away tears, while others grinned and exchanged embraces.
Justice John Paul Stevens, who retired in 2010, was on hand
for the decision, and many of the justices’ clerks took seats in the chamber,
which was nearly full as the ruling was announced. The decision made same-sex
marriage a reality in the 13 states that had continued to ban it.
Outside the Supreme Court, the police allowed hundreds of
people waving rainbow flags and holding signs to advance onto the court plaza
as those present for the decision streamed down the steps. “Love has won,” the
crowd chanted as courtroom witnesses threw up their arms in victory.
In remarks in the Rose Garden, President Obama welcomed the
decision, saying it “affirms what millions of Americans already believe in
their hearts.”
“Today,” he said, “we can say, in no uncertain terms, that
we have made our union a little more perfect.”
Justice Kennedy was the author of all three of the Supreme
Court’s previous gay rights landmarks. The latest decision came exactly two
years after his majority opinion in United States v. Windsor, which struck down
a federal law denying benefits to married same-sex couples, and exactly 12
years after his majority opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down laws
making gay sex a crime.
In all of those decisions, Justice Kennedy embraced a vision
of a living Constitution, one that evolves with societal changes.
“The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in
our own times,” he wrote on Friday. “The generations that wrote and ratified
the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the
extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future
generations a charter protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as
we learn its meaning.”
This drew a withering response from Justice Scalia, a
proponent of reading the Constitution according to the original understanding
of those who adopted it. His dissent was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.
“They have discovered in the Fourteenth Amendment,” Justice
Scalia wrote of the majority, “a ‘fundamental right’ overlooked by every person
alive at the time of ratification, and almost everyone else in the time since.”
“These justices know,” Justice Scalia said, “that limiting
marriage to one man and one woman is contrary to reason; they know that an
institution as old as government itself, and accepted by every nation in
history until 15 years ago, cannot possibly be supported by anything other than
ignorance or bigotry.”
Justice Kennedy rooted the ruling in a fundamental right to
marriage. Marriage is a “keystone of our social order,” he said, and of special
importance to couples raising children.
“Without the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers,” he wrote, “their children suffer the stigma of knowing their families are somehow lesser. They also suffer the significant material costs of being raised by unmarried parents, relegated through no fault of their own to a more difficult and uncertain family life. The marriage laws at issue here thus harm and humiliate the children of same-sex couples.”
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia
Sotomayor and Elena Kagan joined Justice Kennedy’s majority opinion.
In dissent, Chief Justice Roberts said the majority opinion
was “an act of will, not legal judgment.”
“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, for the Kalahari Bushmen and the Han Chinese, the Carthaginians and the Aztecs,” he wrote. “Just who do we think we are?”
The majority and dissenting opinions took differing views
about whether the decision would harm religious liberty. Justice Kennedy said
the First Amendment “ensures that religious organizations and persons are given
proper protection as they seek to teach the principles that are so fulfilling and
so central to their lives and faiths.” He said both sides should engage in “an
open and searching debate.”
Chief Justice Roberts responded that “people of faith can
take no comfort in the treatment they receive from the majority today.”
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in his dissent, saw a broader
threat from the majority opinion. “It will be used to vilify Americans who are
unwilling to assent to the new orthodoxy,” Justice Alito wrote. “In the course
of its opinion, the majority compares traditional marriage laws to laws that
denied equal treatment for African-Americans and women. The implications of
this analogy will be exploited by those who are determined to stamp out every
vestige of dissent.”
Gay rights advocates had constructed a careful litigation
and public relations strategy to build momentum and bring the issue to the
Supreme Court when it appeared ready to rule in their favor. As in earlier
civil rights cases, the court had responded cautiously and methodically, laying
judicial groundwork for a transformative decision.
It waited for scores of lower courts to strike down bans on
same-sex marriages before addressing the issue, and Justice Kennedy took the
unusual step of listing those decisions in an appendix to his opinion.
Chief Justice Roberts said that only 11 states and the
District of Columbia had embraced the right to same-sex marriage
democratically, at voting booths and in state legislatures. The rest of the 37
states that allow such unions did so because of court rulings. Gay rights
advocates, the chief justice wrote, would have been better off with a victory
achieved through the political process, particularly “when the winds of change
were freshening at their backs.”
In his own dissent, Justice Scalia took a similar view,
saying that the majority’s assertiveness represented a “threat to American
democracy.”
But Justice Kennedy rejected that idea.
“It is of no moment whether advocates of same-sex marriage now enjoy or lack momentum in the democratic process,” he wrote. “The issue before the court here is the legal question whether the Constitution protects the right of same-sex couples to marry.”
Later in the opinion, Justice Kennedy answered the question.
“The Constitution,” he wrote, “grants them that right.”
Source
NY Times
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