In a landmark 5-4 opinion, the Supreme Court ruled Friday that states cannot ban same-sex marriage, handing gay rights advocates their biggest victory yet.
The relevant cases were argued earlier this year. Attorney John Bursch, serving as Michigan’s Special Assistant Attorney General, defended four states’ bans on gay marriage before the Court, arguing that the case was not about how to define marriage, but rather about who gets to decide the question.
The case comes before the Supreme Court after several lower courts have overturned state bans on gay marriage. A federal appeals court had previously ruled in favor of the state bans, with Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals writing a majority opinion in line with the rationale that the issue should be decided through the political process, not the courts.
Fourteen couples and two widowers challenged the bans. Attorneys Mary Bonauto and Doug Hallward-Driemeier presented their case before the Court, arguing that the freedom to marry is a fundamental right for all people and should not be left to popular vote.
Three years after President Barack Obama first voiced his support for gay couples’ right to marry, his administration supported the same sex couples at the Supreme Court.
“Gay and lesbian people are equal,” Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr. told the justices at the oral arguments earlier this year. “It is simply untenable — untenable — to suggest that they can be denied the right of equal participation in an institution of marriage, or that they can be required to wait until the majority decides that it is ready to treat gay and lesbian people as equals.
The same-sex couples who challenged gay marriage bans here in Michigan, Tennessee, Kentucky and Ohio were just a few of the estimated 650,000
April Deboer and Janye Rowse, two nurses from Hazel Park are at the center of Michigan’s case. The mothers initially went to court to win the right to jointly adopt each other’s children but then their focus turned to the state’s ban on gay marriage.
Clerks in Macomb,Wayne, Oakland, Ingham, Kalamazoo and Ottawa counties have also said they would be ready to issue licenses immediately.
CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin talks about the Supreme Court’s decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, saying it marks a profound change in American life: