Tag Archives: Justice Anthony Kennedy

Marriage EQUALIZED: SCOTUS Strikes Down State Marriage Bans

BREAKING:  In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has invalidated ALL state bans against same-sex marriage. Justice Anthony Kennedy joined Justices Elena Kagen, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg to form the majority, with Justices John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia in the dissent.

The ruling’s foundation came from the Fourteenth Amendment of the constitution.  Directly from the majority opinion

The right of same-sex couples to marry is also derived from the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. The Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause are connected in a profound way. Rights implicit in liberty and rights secured by equal protection may rest on different precepts and are not always coextensive, yet each may be instructive as to the meaning and reach of the other. This dynamic is reflected in Loving, where the Court invoked both the Equal Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause; and in Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U. S. 374, where the Court invalidated a law barring fathers delinquent on child-support payments from marrying. Indeed, recognizing that new insights and societal understandings can reveal unjustified inequality within fundamental institutions that once passed unnoticed and unchallenged, this Court has invoked equal protection principles to invalidate laws imposing sexbased inequality on marriage,…

No doubt about it… this is an historic day for the United States of America.  With same-sex marriage now legal in all 50 states, we must wait and see how this ruling comes into reality.  In the case of Texas, at least 3 county clerks are ready to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, though sadly Harris County is not one of them. Texas Leftist will have more as the process of marriage unfolds across the state, and the nation.

SCOTUS