WASHINGTON (ABP) — A New York state appeals court has overturned a lower court's ruling in favor of gay marriage. Meanwhile, the effort to secure the right to marry has expanded to Iowa's courts.
A five-judge panel of the New York Supreme Court appellate division handed down the ruling Dec. 8 in Hernandez v. Robles.
In a 4-1 ruling, the panel said a lower-court judge erred in February when she said state marriage laws that mention only heterosexual marriage violate the New York Constitution. Writing for the majority, Justice Milton Williams said such decisions should be left up to legislators, and that the state has a rational and compelling interest in limiting marriage to heterosexual couples.
“Marriage, defined as the union between one man and one woman, is based upon important public-policy considerations and has been recognized as a fundamental constitutional right,” Williams wrote. “The legislative policy rationale is that society and government have a strong interest in fostering heterosexual marriage as the social institution that best forges a linkage between sex, procreation and child rearing.”
Williams also said the lower court had overstepped its bounds in the ruling. “The … court's decision, by redefining traditional marriage, usurped the legislature's mandated role to make policy decisions as to which type of family unit works best for society and therefore should be encouraged with benefits and other preferences.”
But Justice David Saxe, the lone dissenter, said the lower court had a responsibility to strike down heterosexual-only marriage because it clearly discriminates against homosexual couples.
“Civil marriage is an institution created by the state, and the state makes numerous rights and benefits available to those entering into that status. The denial of these rights and benefits to our state's homosexual residents is contrary to the basic principles underlying our constitution, our legal system and our concepts of liberty and justice, and perpetuates a deeply ingrained form of legalized discrimination,” Saxe wrote.
The majority's appeal to tradition in defining marriage law rang hollow, Saxe wrote, because the courts have recognized that heterosexual marriage has changed radically over the course of the nation's history. For example, he said, the law treated married women essentially as the property of their husbands until the mid-19th century.
“It is fair to say that both the law and the population generally now view marriage, at least in the abstract ideal, as a partnership of equals with equal rights, who have mutually joined to form a new family unit, founded upon shared intimacy and mutual financial and emotional support,” Saxe wrote. “Employing the reasoning that marriage must be limited to heterosexuals because that is what the institution has historically been merely justifies discrimination with the bare explanation that it has always been this way.”
The decision is on one of several gay-marriage lawsuits now pending in state courts around the country. Plaintiffs expect a decision any day from the Washington state Supreme Court, and a gay-rights group filed a lawsuit in Iowa Dec. 13.
The Iowa suit, filed by Lambda Legal on behalf of six same-sex couples, claims the state constitution's equal-protection and due-process provisions require equal access to marriage for same-sex couples.