While same-sex marriage supporters hailed on Wednesday historic Supreme Court decisions that struck down a federal law denying recognition of such unions and left the door open for gays and lesbians to wed once again in California, opponents vowed to keep up their campaign in a pitched state-by-state battle.The justices struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law passed by Congress that barred recognition of same-sex marriages and thereby denied more than 1,100 benefits to married gay and lesbian couples. They also declined to rule in the case of Proposition 8, which barred same-sex marriage in California, saying supporters of the ban didn't have the legal standing to lodge an appeal of a lower court’s decision against the measure. That should allow weddings in the Golden State to resume in July.
A group of people supporting same-sex marriage celebrate the Supreme Court's ruling to strike down DOMA Wednesday.
"This is the gay marriage movement's Cinderella moment … this is the big legal turning point," said Bill Eskridge, a professor at Yale Law School and a constitutional law expert who has authored many works on legal issues facing same-sex couples.
"At long last, the legal marriages of countless gay and lesbian couples will be afforded the same federal recognition and protections as any other," Wilson Cruz, of gay rights advocacy group, GLAAD, said in a statement. "Today is a cornerstone for justice and equality -- when our nation once again moved closer to recognizing and celebrating all LGBT Americans for their contributions to our great country."
But opponents said the decision in DOMA upheld another key part of that federal law known as Section 2.
“Which means that the states still get to define marriage for themselves and don't have to recognize marriages performed in other states and I think that part of the holding -- the deference to the states definition of marriage – actually calls into question the Proposition 8 ruling” at the district court level in which it was struck down, said John Eastman, chairman of the National Organization for Marriage, which has spent tens of millions of dollars to bring votes in dozens of states blocking same-sex marriage.
“We clearly have a mixed ruling here. Justice Kennedy did not say that all states must recognize same-sex marriage. In fact, his opinion is full of deference to the states determination of marriage policy."
Both sides could “draw sustenance” from the DOMA ruling, but it wasn't clear whether striking down the federal law necessarily meant that the justices would also end state same-sex marriage bans, said Michael Klarman, a Harvard Law School professor and author of “From the Closet to the Altar: Courts, Backlash, and the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage.”
“There's just no way to tell and they very consciously wrote the opinion in such a way that it applies to DOMA but it doesn't necessarily say that any other state has to go and marry same sex couples,” he said. “All the court is saying is that Congress can't any longer have its own definition of marriage that excludes same-sex couples … Congress has to treat them (those in states where same-sex marriage is legal) as if they are any other married couple.”
“There is just no way that one can definitively say whether this opinion would lead to same sex marriage in the states or wouldn't,” he added. “But one can find a lot of ammunition within it that one could make the challenge at the state level as well.”
Same-sex marriage has been fought over at the ballot box in almost every state, debated in many state legislatures, and become the subject of several court battles for nearly 20 years. Though the decisions were disappointing for anti-gay marriage activists, they did leave the state battleground open, where opponents have shuttled through 36 separate bans on same-sex marriage (35, excluding California). A dozen states, plus the District of Columbia, allow gays and lesbians to tie the knot.
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