Lewis v. Harris II — “civil union” versus “marriage”, one more time
posted by Marc Poirier
Last month, on behalf of several same-sex couples, Lambda Legal filed a “Petition in Aid of Litigants’ Rights” with the New Jersey Supreme Court, asking for further relief in Lewis v. Harris, 908 A.2d 196 (N.J. 2006). The petition argues that the state’s Civil Union Law, created in 2006, has utterly failed to create the constitutionally required equality for same-sex couples. It requests the court to revisit the matter forthwith and order the state to recognize marriage for same-sex couples.
In 2006 in Lewis v. Harris, the court held 7 – 0 that New Jersey’s constitution as a matter of equal protection (although not as a fundamental right) required the state to provide all the rights and benefits of marriage to committed same-sex couples, and also some kind of full legal recognition — the already-existing “domestic partnership” regime, with its limited benefits and different structure, was constitutionally insufficient. But the court split 4 – 3 on whether to require the legislature to include same-sex couples within the legal definition of marriage, or to permit the legislature in its discretion instead to create a new legal institution for same-sex couples. The legislature (very quickly) chose the latter course, enacting New Jersey’s Civil Union Law.
Three years later, the March 2010 pleading challenges that law as constitutionally inadequate. It argues that the separate institution of civil union does not convey to same-sex couples and their families the important though intangible status of marriage, and that the separate-but-equal approach stigmatizes them in an ongoing way; that same-sex couples and their families must expend considerable effort and suffer considerable embarrassment claiming the equal rights that “civil union” is supposed to provide; and that in daily encounters, failures of others to recognize “civil union”, whether inadvertent or deliberate and feigned, regularly result in not being accorded rights and benefits equivalent to those of different-sex married couples, the goal that civil union is required to achieve.
April 29, 2010 at 2:15 pm
Tags: civil union, Constitutional Law, domestic partnership, equal protection, homosexuality, LGBT, marriage equality, same sex marriage, separate but equal
Posted in: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Family Law
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Prop 8 ruling to come down on Tuesday
posted by Kaimipono D. Wenger
From the court’s own website:
The California Supreme Court has announced that it will issue an opinion in three cases challenging the constitutionality of Proposition 8 at 10 a.m. on Tuesday, May 26, 2009.
I’ve previously blogged some analysis of the case. Like most other observers, I expect that the court will reject both the revision/amendment challenge and the fundamental rights challenge, but will not retroactively nullify the 18,000 marriages that took place before November. That would be, in effect, a partial victory for both sides.
I guess we’ll find out one way or another this Tuesday.
May 22, 2009 at 1:46 pm
Tags: california, proposition 8, same sex marriage
Posted in: Civil Rights, Constitutional Law, Current Events, Feminism and Gender
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