| Master Fan
Joined: Jan 2002
Posts: 12,871
| New Jersey Court Backs Rights for Same-Sex Unions
Quote:
October 25, 2006
New Jersey Court Backs Rights for Same-Sex Unions
By LAURA MANSNERUS
The State Supreme Court in New Jersey said today that same-sex couples are entitled to “the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes.”
But the court, in its 4-3 ruling, said that whether that status should be called marriage, or something else, “is a matter left to the democratic process.”
The court’s eagerly awaited decision found that an arrangement akin to that in Vermont, which authorizes civil unions between same-sex couples but does not call them marriages, would satisfy the New Jersey constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.
The court gave the legislature a six-month deadline to enact the necessary legislation to provide for same-sex unions with rights equal to those of married couples.
The decision leaves Massachusetts as the only state to authorize same-sex marriages as such. Since the Massachusetts Supreme Court held in 2003 that that full marriage rights were required for all couples under that state’s constitution, gay-rights advocates have suffered a string of defeats in other states. The Court of Appeals of New York rejected a similar argument in July.
Steven Goldstein, the chairman of the gay-rights group Garden State Equality, said the court’s decision was disappointing.
“Those who would view today’s ruling as a victory for same sex couples are dead wrong,” he said. “Half-steps short of marriage — like New Jersey’s domestic-partnership law and also civil union laws — don’t work in the real world.”
Mr. Goldstein promised an immediate campaign to change the state law.
According to the 90-page description of their ruling published by the court today, the justices acknowledged that “times and attitudes have changed.”
“There has been a developing understanding that discrimination against gays and lesbians is no longer acceptable in this state,” they wrote.
But the justices wrote that their mission in this case was a narrow one.
“At this point, the Court does not consider whether committed same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, but only whether those couples are entitled to the same rights and benefits afforded to married heterosexual couples,” the court wrote.
“Cast in that light, the issue is not about the transformation of the traditional definition of marriage, but about the unequal dispensation of benefits and privileges to one of two similarly situated classes of people.”
The justices went on to say that this case and other federal cases cited by the plaintiffs “fall far short” of establishing a fundamental right to marriage, which is an institution the court termed “deeply rooted in the traditions, history, and conscience of the people of this state."
“Despite the rich diversity of this state, the tolerance and goodness of its people, and the many recent advances made by gays and lesbians toward achieving social acceptance and equality under the law, the Court cannot find that the right to same-sex marriage is a fundamental right under our constitution,” the court wrote.
But the court also said that denying same sex couples “the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose.”
Chief Justice Deborah Poritz, who is retiring from the New Jersey high court today, said the majority didn’t go far enough, and that gay couples have the "fundamental right to participate in a state-sanctioned civil marriage," according to Bloomberg News.
She and two other justices concurred in part and dissented in part with the majority opinion written by Justice Barry Albin.
Courts in many other states have rejected similar lawsuits by same-sex couples, ruling, as the Court of Appeals of New York did in July, that only the legislature can define marriage or redefine it to include same-sex unions.
No state legislature has done so. The California legislature came closest, passing a bill in 2005 that would have redefined marriage as “between persons,” permitting same-sex couples to marry, but the bill was vetoed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.
To the contrary, nineteen states have adopted constitutional amendments explicitly banning same-sex marriage. Most others have statutory bans, but New Jersey and four other states have neither.
New Jersey is one of several states that recognize domestic partnerships between unmarried people irrespective of sex, which afford limited rights and benefits; Vermont and Connecticut authorize civil unions, which afford more legal protections.
In part because the New Jersey Supreme Court is known as relatively liberal and, above all, independent, the lawsuit here garnered national attention.
The case was brought by seven gay and lesbian couples who have been together from 14 to 35 years and who were denied marriage licenses. Five of them have children.
The trial-level and lower appellate courts rejected their claim that the state constitution afforded them the right to marry as heterosexual couples do. The Appellate Division said in June 2005 that marriage between members of the same sex was neither a fundamental right under the constitution nor one covered by its equal- protection clause.
The state Supreme Court heard the case, known as Lewis v. Harris, on Feb. 15.
Under New Jersey’s domestic partnership law, enacted in 2004, same-sex partners may make critical medical decisions for one another, for example, and must be offered the same health coverage by insurers that is offered to spouses.
The law was approved by the Legislature with little dissent, and signed by then-Gov. James E. McGreevey — who at the time did not support fully legalized gay marriage, even though he would resign several months later with the statement, “I am a gay American.”
Mr. Goldstein was among those who celebrated the domestic partnership law, but he would later find that it fell short of expectations. He said today that “hospitals and other employers have told domestic-partnered couples across New Jersey: We don’t care what the domestic partnership law says, you’re not married.”
In the last few years, public opinion has become more accepting of gay marriage, at least in New Jersey. A Rutgers-Eagleton poll of New Jersey residents taken in June found that 50 percent said they supported allowing same-sex couples to marry legally, while 44 percent were opposed. (The margin of error was plus or minus 4 percentage points.) When the poll asked the same question in 2003, 43 percent of respondents supported legal recognition for gay marriage and 50 percent were opposed.
Still, conservative opposition has also organized, culminating in proposed constitutional amendments on the ballot in 11 states in 2004. All were approved overwhelmingly.
Last summer, the New York Court of Appeals ruled in a 4-to-2 decision that it would not depart from the state’s century-old law defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye wrote, in a sharply worded dissent, that “a history or tradition of discrimination — no matter how entrenched — does not make the discrimination constitutional.”
Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company
| I thought this was an interesting angle to take. Personally, I think the state should get out of "marriage" altogether - civil unions only, in terms of a sort of contract between two people/rights to the (tax, etc) benefits accorded to married people.
So - am I opening up a huge can of worms by posting this?  __________________ (i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
e. e. cummings - somewhere i have never traveled
|
