Also known as: right to marriage · marriage right · marriage rights · right of marriage
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
A fundamental liberty interest protected by the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. Significant state interference with the decision to marry triggers heightened scrutiny requiring the government to show sufficiently important interests and close tailoring to those interests alone.
Lena, a software engineer with unpaid child support from a prior relationship, applies for a marriage license. A state statute requires court approval for high-compensation workers who owe arrears before they may marry. The court denies permission. Lena challenges the denial, and the statute falls because it imposes a direct barrier on the fundamental right without narrow tailoring to collection goals.
Rosa Ruiz and Ricardo Rojas, a married couple, seek to exercise reproductive choices together. State rules impose spousal notification requirements that burden their marital autonomy. The couple sues, arguing the rules interfere with protected marital decisions. The court applies the framework recognizing marriage as part of fundamental liberty interests.
The Pennsylvania Abortion Control Act of 1982, as amended in 1988 and 1989, established several requirements governing the performance of abortions within the Commonwealth. The Act required a woman seeking an abortion to provide informed consent after receiving specific information from a physician or counselor at least twenty-four hours before the procedure. It mandated that a minor obtain the informed consent of one parent, subject to a judicial bypass option. It further required a married woman to sign a statement confirming that she had notified her husband of her planned abortion, unless certain exceptions applied. The Act also imposed reporting obligations on facilities providing abortion services and defined a medical emergency exception to the various requirements. Before any of these provisions took effect, the petitioners brought suit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The petitioners were five abortion clinics and one physician representing himself as well as a class of physicians who provide abortion services. They sought declaratory and injunctive relief and challenged each provision as unconstitutional on its face. The District Court entered a preliminary injunction. After conducting a three-day bench trial, the District Court held all the provisions unconstitutional and entered a permanent injunction against their enforcement by Pennsylvania. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed in part and reversed in part. It adopted the District Court's factual findings and legal analysis except with respect to the spousal notification requirement. The Court of Appeals upheld the spousal notification requirement as constitutional and applied the undue burden standard in evaluating the provisions. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to consider the constitutionality of the challenged provisions of the Pennsylvania statute.
View caseRalph Richardson moves to Iowa and immediately seeks a divorce from his out-of-state spouse. The state requires one year of residency before granting the dissolution. Richardson challenges the waiting period as a penalty on the right to adjust marital status. The court examines whether the rule unduly burdens the fundamental right tied to marriage.
Carol Sosna married Michael Sosna on September 5, 1964, in Michigan. They lived together in New York between October 1967 and August 1971, after which they separated but continued to reside there. In August 1972 Sosna moved to Iowa with her three children. The following month she petitioned the District Court of Jackson County, Iowa, for dissolution of her marriage. Michael Sosna was personally served when he visited Iowa and made a special appearance to contest jurisdiction. The Iowa court dismissed the petition for lack of jurisdiction under Iowa Code § 598.6 because Sosna had not resided in the state for one year preceding the filing. Instead of appealing, Sosna filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa seeking injunctive and declaratory relief on constitutional grounds. A three-judge court was convened pursuant to 28 U.S.C. §§ 2281 and 2284. While the federal action was pending, the Iowa Supreme Court decided In re Marriage of Williams, 217 N.W.2d 202 (1974), and upheld the statute's constitutionality. The three-judge court upheld the residency requirement. This Court noted probable jurisdiction. During the appeal Sosna obtained a divorce in New York, though custody and support issues remained unresolved from the Iowa proceeding. She returned to Iowa to prosecute the appeal. Sosna sought class certification under Fed. R. Civ. P. 23 to represent Iowa residents who had lived in the state less than one year and wished to initiate divorce actions but were barred by the residency requirement. The parties stipulated that numerous people were similarly situated, joinder was impracticable, her claims were representative, and she would adequately protect class interests. The district court approved the stipulation in a pretrial order.
View caseRoland Rhodes faces prosecution under a state sodomy law after private consensual conduct with his partner. He argues the statute burdens intimate choices protected alongside the right to marry. The court considers whether the law reaches conduct within the zone of liberty interests recognized in marriage cases.
In August 1982, respondent Michael Hardwick was charged with violating the Georgia statute criminalizing sodomy by committing that act with another adult male in the bedroom of respondent's home. After a preliminary hearing, the District Attorney decided not to present the matter to the grand jury unless further evidence developed. Hardwick, who identified as a practicing homosexual, then brought suit in the Federal District Court challenging the constitutionality of the statute insofar as it criminalized consensual sodomy. He asserted that the Georgia sodomy statute, as administered by the defendants, placed him in imminent danger of arrest. The District Court granted the defendants' motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim, relying on Doe v. Commonwealth's Attorney for the City of Richmond, which the Supreme Court had summarily affirmed. A divided panel of the Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed. The appellate court held that the Georgia statute violated respondent's fundamental rights because his homosexual activity is a private and intimate association beyond the reach of state regulation by reason of the Ninth Amendment and the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. It remanded for trial. John and Mary Doe were also plaintiffs in the action. They alleged that they wished to engage in sexual activity proscribed by the statute in the privacy of their home and that they had been chilled and deterred from engaging in such activity by both the existence of the statute and Hardwick's arrest. The District Court held that because they had neither sustained, nor were in immediate danger of sustaining, any direct injury from the enforcement of the statute, they did not have proper standing to maintain the action. The Court of Appeals affirmed that dismissal. The Georgia statute at issue, Ga. Code Ann. § 16-6-2, provides that a person commits the offense of sodomy when he performs or submits to any sexual act involving the sex organs of one person and the mouth or anus of another. A person convicted shall be punished by imprisonment for not less than one nor more than twenty years. Because other Courts of Appeals had arrived at judgments contrary to that of the Eleventh Circuit, the Supreme Court granted the Attorney General's petition for certiorari questioning the holding that the sodomy statute violates the fundamental rights of homosexuals.
View caseRuby Rivera receives a bequest conditioned on marrying within a specified religious group. She challenges the restriction as an unconstitutional interference with her marital choice. The probate court weighs whether the condition unduly burdens the fundamental right to select a spouse.
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.
View caseRegina Robinson and her same-sex partner seek state recognition of their valid out-of-state marriage to obtain spousal benefits. Officials refuse on the ground that only opposite-sex unions receive full status. The couple sues, claiming the denial burdens the fundamental right to marry on equal terms.
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.
View caseHeightened scrutiny applies. The state must demonstrate sufficiently important interests and show that the restriction is closely tailored to advance only those interests.
Supporting sources
Yes. The fundamental right to marry includes same-sex couples and requires equal recognition of their marriages for purposes of legal incidents and benefits.
No. A statute requiring court approval for individuals with unpaid support before they may marry is not narrowly tailored and therefore violates the fundamental right.
Supporting sources
Yes. Racial restrictions on marriage are subject to the most rigid scrutiny and cannot stand unless supported by a purpose wholly independent of racial discrimination.