Law & Society Blog

The New Jersey Supreme Court today ruled that New Jersey has no business denying “committed” gay couples the benefits of marriage. Here are some quotes from the syllabus:

Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed samesex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes. The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to samesex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process.

…

New Jersey’s marriage laws, which were first enacted in 1912, limit marriage to heterosexual couples. The recently enacted Domestic Partnership Act explicitly acknowledges that same-sex couples cannot marry. Although today there is a national debate over whether same-sex marriages should be authorized by the states, the framers of the 1947 New Jersey Constitution could not have imagined that the liberty right protected by Article I, Paragraph 1 embraced same-sex marriage.

Times and attitudes have changed. There has been a developing understanding that discrimination against gays and lesbians is no longer acceptable in this State. On the federal level, the United States Supreme Court has struck down laws that have unconstitutionally targeted gays and lesbians for disparate treatment. Although plaintiffs rely on the federal cases to support the argument that they have a fundamental right to marry under our State Constitution, those cases fall far short of establishing a fundamental right to same-sex marriage “deeply rooted in the traditions, history, and conscience of the people of this State.” Despite the rich diversity of this State, the tolerance and goodness of its people, and the many recent advances made by gays and lesbians toward achieving social acceptance and equality under the law, the Court cannot find that the right to same-sex marriage is a fundamental right under our constitution.

…

The State does not argue that limiting marriage to the union of a man and a woman is needed to encourage  procreation or to create the optimal living environment for children. Other than sustaining the traditional  efinition of marriage, which is not implicated in this discussion, the State has not articulated any legitimate public need for depriving committed same-sex couples of the host of benefits and privileges that are afforded to married heterosexual couples. There is, on the one hand, no rational basis for giving gays and lesbians full civil rights as individuals while, on the other hand, giving them an incomplete set of rights when they enter into committed samesex relationships. To the extent that families are strengthened by encouraging monogamous relationships, whether heterosexual or homosexual, the Court cannot discern a public need that would justify the legal disabilities that now afflict same-sex domestic partnerships.

As we have said before, it is a fundamental tenet of the liberal state that the power of the state to limit citizen’s liberty be restricted to areas in which such restrictions are necessary for the protection of other citizens or the functioning of the commonwealth of citizens. Bans of on gay marriage cannot be justified under universalist morality. Note that the court did not require “marriage” to be extended to gay couples, but only that the benefits and privileges of marriage be extended to them.

Congratulations to New Jersey and to Liberty!

License

This work is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 License.