Marriage and the Supreme Court
Marriage, defined as the legal union of two individuals, conveys specific rights and responsibilities to both partners and remains in effect until death or divorce. The Supreme Court of the United States has historically played a pivotal role in shaping the legal landscape of marriage, particularly since the 1960s. Initially, the court left the regulation of marriage largely to the states, but a series of landmark rulings began to establish a more unified national understanding of marriage rights. Significant cases include *Loving v. Virginia*, which invalidated laws against interracial marriage, and *Obergefell v. Hodges*, which extended marriage rights to same-sex couples, affirming marriage as a fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment.
Despite these advancements, the court's recent decisions have raised concerns about the future of marriage equality. For instance, the ruling in *303 Creative v. Elenis* allowed a website designer to refuse service to same-sex couples, suggesting potential challenges to established marriage rights. Additionally, the 2024 case *Department of State v. Muñoz* indicated possible restrictions on the ability of U.S. citizens to bring foreign spouses into the country. Overall, the evolving role of the Supreme Court in marriage law reflects broader societal shifts and ongoing debates surrounding civil rights and individual freedoms.
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Marriage and the Supreme Court
DESCRIPTION: Marriage is the legal union of two people. The marriage contract conveys rights and duties to both partners and continues until death or divorce.
SIGNIFICANCE: Until the 1960s, the Supreme Court generally regarded the conditions and terms of marriage as an area for the states to control and legislate. However, as a result of several rulings, the court began to form a national concept of marriage.
The conditions and terms of marriage, including who may marry, are largely governed by state laws. Before the mid-twentieth century, the Supreme Court infrequently considered issues involving marriage. One of its main concerns was to ensure that states honored marriages that took place in other states. In its first major case regarding marriage, Reynolds v. United States (1879), the court ruled against polygamy, declaring that it was not subject to First Amendment protection.
Beginning in the 1960s, the Supreme Court made several decisions involving marriage. In Griswold v. Connecticut (1965), the court overturned a law prohibiting the use of contraceptives by married persons. In its ruling, it stated that the law violated marital privacy by allowing the police to invade the “sacred precincts of marital bedrooms.” Two years later, in Loving v. Virginia, the court held that a Virginia state law prohibiting interracial marriages (miscegenation) was unconstitutional. In its ruling, the court clearly stated that marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man” and that the decision to get married was an individual decision not to be limited by law. In Zablocki v. Redhail (1978), the Court overturned a Wisconsin law that prohibited the remarriage of a noncustodial parent who had failed to pay court-ordered child support.
In the twenty-first century, the Supreme Court ruled on several cases involving same-sex marriage as the LGBTQ rights movement gained increasing public support. The first of these involved the federal Defense of Marriage Act (1996), Section 3 of which limited the definition of marriage to opposite-sex couples for federal purposes, such as estate tax exemptions. In United States v. Windsor (2013), the court declared this section unconstitutional and ruled that the federal government must treat same-sex couples whose marriage is recognized in their state in the same manner as opposite-sex couples for the purposes of federal benefits and protections. On the same day, the Supreme Court upheld a lower-court decision in Hollingsworth v. Perry that had overturned California's same-sex marriage ban on the grounds that the parties who had appealed the Ninth Circuit Court's decision did not have standing to do so, allowing same-sex marriage to continue in California but without setting a precedent for future marriage equality decisions. Then, in June 2015, the Supreme Court released its landmark ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges, finding that the right to marry was guaranteed to same-sex couples under the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment and thus legalizing same-sex marriage throughout the United States.
While Obergefell v. Hodges effectively settled the biggest legal debate over marriage in the United States, the Supreme Court continued to hear cases with potential impact on marriage. Notably, there was ongoing conservative backlash against the legalization of same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ rights issues, and after the makeup of the Supreme Court itself skewed sharply conservative with controversial appointments during the administration of President Donald Trump (2017–21), some observers speculated that the Obergefell precedent could be undermined. For example, in the case 303 Creative v. Elenis (2023), the court found that an evangelical Christian website designer could refuse to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, on the grounds that First Amendment considerations have priority over state-level antidiscrimination laws in instances of creative expression. That ruling was seen by many, including the court's three liberal justices in dissent, as opening the door to challenges of same-sex marriage itself.
In 2024, the court ruled on the issue of marriage as it related to noncitizen spouses. In Department of State v. Muñoz, the court ruled 6–3 against a California woman who claimed that the federal government's denial of a visa for her husband from El Salvador violated her constitutional rights. Critics viewed the decision as a setback for Americans who wish to marry and bring foreign spouses into the US, as it rejected the idea that US citizens have a constitutional right to do so.
Bibliography
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