excerpts from
Supreme Court of the United States • Obergefell v. Hodges •
June 26, 2015
[New
perspectives on freedom and justice]
[C]hanged understandings of
marriage are characteristic of a Nation where new dimensions of freedom become
apparent to new generations, often through perspectives that begin in pleas or protests
and then are considered in the political sphere and the judicial process.
[The
living Constitution]
The nature of injustice is that
we may not always see it in our own times. 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. When new insight reveals discord between the
Constitution’s central protections and a received legal stricture, a claim to
liberty must be addressed.
["It
is not good for the man to be alone."—Book of Genesis]
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.
[Children's
welfare]
A third basis for protecting the
right to marry is that it safeguards children and families and thus draws
meaning from related rights of childrearing, procreation, and education. . . .
Excluding same-sex couples from
marriage thus conflicts with a central premise of the right to marry. Without
the recognition, stability, and predictability marriage offers, 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.
[Benefits
of marriage]
[J]ust as a couple vows to
support each other, so does society pledge to support the couple, offering symbolic
recognition and material benefits to protect and nourish the union. Indeed,
while the States are in general free to vary the benefits they confer on all
married couples, they have throughout our history made marriage the basis for
an expanding list of governmental rights, benefits, and responsibilities. These
aspects of marital status include: taxation; inheritance and property rights;
rules of intestate succession; spousal privilege in the law of evidence;
hospital access; medical decisionmaking authority; adoption rights; the rights
and benefits of survivors; birth and death certificates; professional ethics
rules; campaign finance restrictions; workers’ compensation benefits; health
insurance; and child custody, support, and visitation rules.
[Why
courts decide]
The dynamic of our constitutional
system is that individuals need not await legislative action before asserting a
fundamental right. The Nation’s courts are open to injured individuals who come
to them to vindicate their own direct, personal stake in our basic charter. An
individual can invoke a right to constitutional protection when he or she is harmed,
even if the broader public disagrees and even if the legislature refuses to
act.
[Respect
for marriage]
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. As some of the petitioners in these cases
demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would
misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage.
Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to
find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live
in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They
ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that
right.
