First Amendment

During a 1967 adjudicatory hearing conducted pursuant to section 742 of the New York Family Court Act, a judge in New York Family Court found that the twelve-year-old appellant had entered a locker and stolen one hundred twelve dollars from a woman's pocketbook. The petition which charged appellant with delinquency alleged that his act, if done by an adult, would constitute the crime or crimes of larceny. The judge acknowledged that the proof might not establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt but relied on section 744(b) of the New York Family Court Act, which provides that any determination at the conclusion of an adjudicatory hearing that a juvenile did an act or acts must be based on a preponderance of the evidence. After a subsequent dispositional hearing, appellant was ordered placed in a training school for an initial period of eighteen months, subject to annual extensions of his commitment until his eighteenth birthday, six years in appellant's case. The Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court, First Judicial Department, affirmed without opinion. The New York Court of Appeals then affirmed by a four-to-three vote, expressly sustaining the constitutionality of section 744(b). The Supreme Court noted probable jurisdiction.

The petitioners were fourteen same-sex couples and two men whose same-sex partners were deceased. They lived in Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee. Those states defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman under their constitutions and statutes. The petitioners filed suits in federal district courts in their home states. They sought marriage licenses or recognition of marriages lawfully performed elsewhere. James Obergefell and John Arthur traveled from Ohio to Maryland to marry aboard a medical transport plane because Arthur suffered from ALS; Obergefell later sought to be listed as surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate. April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse, Michigan nurses, adopted three children but could not both serve as legal parents under state adoption rules. Army Reserve Sergeant Ijpe DeKoe and Thomas Kostura married in New York before DeKoe's deployment to Afghanistan and later settled in Tennessee. Each district court ruled in the petitioners' favor. The respondents appealed. The Sixth Circuit consolidated the cases and reversed the district court judgments. The petitioners sought certiorari, which the Supreme Court granted. Same-sex couples had begun establishing families after substantial cultural and political developments in the late twentieth century. Earlier litigation had addressed the legal status of gays and lesbians, including challenges that reached the Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick and Lawrence v. Texas.

L. B. Sullivan is one of three elected Commissioners of the City of Montgomery, Alabama. He has duties including supervision of the Police Department. He brought this civil libel action against the New York Times Company and four individual petitioners who were Alabama clergymen. The suit sought $500,000 in damages based on a full-page advertisement entitled "Heed Their Rising Voices" that appeared in the New York Times on March 29, 1960. A jury in the Circuit Court of Montgomery County awarded Sullivan the full amount claimed against all petitioners. The Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed the judgment. The advertisement was signed by the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King and the Struggle for Freedom in the South. It described widespread non-violent demonstrations by Southern Negro students and an unprecedented wave of terror against them. Two paragraphs formed the basis of the claim. One alleged that after students sang on the State Capitol steps their leaders were expelled, truckloads of police ringed the Alabama State College Campus, and the dining hall was padlocked to starve students into submission. The other stated that Southern violators had bombed Dr. King's home, assaulted him, arrested him seven times, and charged him with perjury. The text appeared over the names of 64 persons. It was endorsed by the individual petitioners among others. Sullivan contended that the references to police referred to him in his supervisory capacity. Six Montgomery residents testified that they read the statements as referring to him. However, several statements were inaccurate. The students sang the National Anthem rather than "My Country, 'Tis of Thee." The expulsions were for a different incident. The dining hall was not padlocked. Dr. King had been arrested only four times. The bombings occurred before Sullivan's tenure with police efforts to apprehend the perpetrators. The Times published the advertisement for approximately $4800. It acted upon an order from a New York advertising agency. The agency provided a letter from A. Philip Randolph certifying authorization. The Times made no efforts to confirm its accuracy against its own news files. Sullivan served written demands for retraction on the petitioners pursuant to Alabama law. None of the individual petitioners responded as they had not authorized use of their names. The Times did not retract. It published a retraction only upon demand by Governor John Patterson after learning more facts. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to the separate petitions of the individual petitioners and the Times due to the importance of the constitutional issues involved.