fundamental right to marry

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.

David Shapira, M. D., died April 13, 1973, a resident of this county. This is an action for a declaratory judgment and the construction of the will of David Shapira, M. D. By agreement of the parties, the case has been submitted upon the pleadings and the exhibit. The portions of the will in controversy provide that the residue goes to the testator's three beloved children, Buth Shapira Aharoni, Daniel Jacob Shapira, and Mark Benjamin Simon Shapira in equal shares with qualifications. The will states that Daniel Jacob Shapira should receive his share of the bequest only if he is married at the time of the testator's death to a Jewish girl whose both parents were Jewish. In the event that at the time of the testator's death he is not married to a Jewish girl whose both parents were Jewish, then his share should be kept by the executor for a period of not longer than seven years. If Daniel Jacob gets married within the seven year period to a Jewish girl whose both parents were Jewish, the executor is instructed to turn over his share to him. In the event that Daniel Jacob is unmarried within the seven years after the testator's death to a Jewish girl whose both parents were Jewish, or if he is married to a non Jewish girl, then his share should go to the State of Israel, absolutely. The provision for the testator's other son Mark is conditioned substantially similarly. Daniel Jacob Shapira, the plaintiff, is twenty-one years of age, unmarried and a student at Youngstown State University. The plaintiff alleges that the condition upon his inheritance is unconstitutional, contrary to public policy and unenforceable because of its unreasonableness, and that he should be given his bequest free of the restriction.

Respondents, a class of inmates confined or to be confined at the Renz Correctional Institution, brought this action in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri against petitioners, officials of the Missouri Division of Corrections. The Renz facility, located in Cedar City, Missouri, housed both male and female prisoners of varying security classifications in a minimum security setting without guard towers or walls. Most female prisoners at Renz were medium or maximum security inmates, while most male prisoners were minimum security offenders. The facility was occasionally used to provide protective custody for inmates from other Missouri prisons. Two regulations were at issue in the litigation. The correspondence regulation permitted inmate-to-inmate letters only with immediate family members at other institutions or concerning legal matters, and otherwise only when the classification team of each inmate deemed it in the best interest of the parties. As applied at Renz, the rule operated as a complete prohibition on correspondence between non-family inmates. The marriage regulation, promulgated while the suit was pending, required the prison superintendent's approval for any inmate marriage and directed that approval be granted only upon a finding of compelling reasons, which officials generally limited to situations involving pregnancy or the birth of an illegitimate child. The District Court certified a class encompassing persons confined or to be confined at Renz who wished to correspond with inmates at other Missouri facilities or to marry inmates of Missouri correctional institutions. Following a bench trial, the District Court concluded that both regulations violated the inmates' constitutional rights. The court applied a strict scrutiny standard derived from prior precedent and determined that the regulations were not the least restrictive means of achieving the state's asserted interests. The District Court also found that the correspondence regulation had been enforced in an arbitrary and capricious manner. The Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit affirmed the District Court's judgment in its entirety. The appellate court agreed that strict scrutiny was the proper standard and that neither regulation satisfied that standard. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the validity of the regulations.