Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s announcement on June 27 that he would retire from active service on the U.S. Supreme Court as of July 31, 2018, opening up a vacancy for President Donald J. Trump to fill with the assistance of the bare majority of Republican United States Senators, portends a serious setback for LGBT rights in the years ahead. Kennedy cast a crucial vote and wrote powerfully emotional opinions to establish the dignity of LGBT … <Read More>
United States v. Windsor
U.S. Supreme Court Denies Petition to Review Texas Supreme Court Ruling in Houston Benefits Case
On December 4 the U.S. Supreme Court rejected without explanation a petition from the City of Houston seeking review of the Texas Supreme Court’s June 30 ruling in Pidgeon v. Turner, which had cast doubt on whether the City was obligated under Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 marriage equality ruling, to provide same-sex spouses of Houston employees the same employee benefits offered to different-sex spouses.
A decision by the Supreme Court to deny review of … <Read More>
Pennsylvania Superior Court Recognizes Pre-2005 Same-Sex Common Law Marriage
Pennsylvania abolished common-law marriage by statute effective January 24, 2005, but provided that the statute should not be “deemed or taken to render any common-law marriage otherwise lawful and contracted on or before January 1, 2005, invalid.” After the U.S. Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision in 2015, holding that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry, implicitly affirming Whitewood v. Wolf, 992 F. Supp. 2d 410 (M.D. Pa. 2014), a trial court … <Read More>
NCLR Seeks Supreme Court Review of Arkansas Birth Certificate Decision
The National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) filed a petition for certiorari with the U.S. Supreme Court on February 13, seeking review of the Arkansas Supreme Court’s decision that the state was not required under Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), to extend the presumption of parentage to the same-sex spouse of a birth mother for purposes of recording parentage on a birth certificate. Smith v. Pavan, 2016 WL 7156529 (Ark. … <Read More>
Anti-Gay Justice Scalia Exits the Stage
With the death of Antonin Scalia the Supreme Court has lost its most outspoken anti-gay member. Ever since taking his seat on the high bench in 1986, Justice Scalia voted consistently against gay rights claims, sometimes in the majority and sometimes in dissent, regardless of the factual context in which they arose.
Scalia was appointed to the Court by President Ronald Reagan shortly after the Court had decided Bowers v. Hardwick (1986), the notorious case … <Read More>
Marriage Equality Efforts Chugging Along Nicely
The lack of any big LGBT court decision over the past week or so, together with the beginning of the Jewish High Holy Days, explains why I haven’t posted anything on this blog since August. But things have definitely not been standing still in the ongoing marriage equality campaign.
The biggest deal has probably been the gradual rolling out of federal constitutional recognition for same-sex marriages in the wake of U.S. v. Windsor, the June … <Read More>
Implementing the Windsor Decision
Under U.S. v. Windsor, Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional and we are left with no broadly applicable federal statutory definition of marriage. What we have are 13 states and the District of Columbia, which now grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and several other countries (including neighboring Canada) in which such licenses are also available. At this point, there are thousands of same-sex couples living in the United States who … <Read More>
Michigan may be the next state to defend its ban on same-sex marriage in a federal court trial.
Senior U.S. District Judge Bernard A. Friedman, appointed to the court by President Ronald Reagan in 1988, ruled on July 1 that a Michigan lesbian couple is entitled to a trial of their claim that the state adoption law, forbidding same-sex couples to jointly adopt children, and the Michigan Marriage Amendment (MMA), forbidding same-sex marriages, violate their rights under the 14th Amendment. Rejecting the state’s motion to dismiss the case, Judge Friedman cited the Supreme … <Read More>
Supreme Court Strikes Section 3 of DOMA, Dismisses Proposition 8 Appeal
[Second draft of history. My prior posting on this week’s ruling in the DOMA and Prop 8 cases was written shortly after the opinion was release, and was intended as a basis for my journalistic comment to be published in Gay City News that day. Herewith my more extensive draft, reflecting further thought and containing many more quotes from the Court’s opinion, written two days later. And amended after a few hours to reflect some
Merits Briefs in Supreme Court Marriage Cases Make Heavy Federalism Pitch
On January 22, attorneys defending against constitutional challenges to California Proposition 8 and Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act filed their briefs on the merits with the United States Supreme Court. Links to the briefs can be found on the Supreme Court’s website: click on the Docket box on the left side of the site and there is a link to the special page set up for these cases (Hollingsworth v. Perry; … <Read More>