Goodridge v. Dept. of Public Health, 798 N.E.2d 941 (Mass. 2003), is a landmark Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court case in which the Court held that the Massachusetts Constitution requires the state to legally recognize same-sex marriage. The November 18, 2003, decision was the first by a U.S. state's highest court to find that same-sex couples had the right to marry.

After holding a hearing in March 2002 at which GLAD attorney Jennifer Levi argued on behalf of the plaintiff couples, Superior Court Judge Thomas Connolly ruled in favor of the Department of Health on May 7, 2002. He wrote: "While this court understands the reasons for the plaintiffs' request to reverse the Commonwealth's centuries-old legal tradition of restricting marriage to opposite-sex couples, their request should be directed to the Legislature, not the courts.” He noted that the legislature had recently defeated same-sex marriage legislation and defended that as a rational decision rooted in the historical definition of marriage and its association with child rearing:

The plaintiffs appealed directly to the Supreme Judicial Court (SJC), which heard arguments on March 4, 2003. Mary Bonauto of GLAD argued the case for the plaintiffs. Assistant Attorney General Judith Yogman represented the DPH.

Massachusetts Attorney General Tom Reilly argued in his brief that the Court should defer to the legislature's judgment of "the broader public interest" and recognize that "same-sex couples cannot procreate on their own and therefore cannot accomplish the 'main object' ... of marriage as historically understood."

Amicus briefs were submitted on behalf of the Boston Bar Association, the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Family Institute, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, The Common Good Foundation, the Massachusetts Citizens Alliance, the Catholic Action League of Massachusetts, The National Legal Foundation, the Marriage Law Project, the Religious Coalition for the Freedom to Marry, the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, Coalition gaie et lesbienne du Québec, the Free Market Foundation, the Massachusetts Psychiatric Society, Agudath Israel of America, several Attorneys General (including those of Nebraska, Utah, and South Dakota), and a variety of individuals. The plaintiffs had asked the Court to say that denying marriage licenses to same-sex couples violated Massachusetts law. Instead the opinion said: "We declare that barring an individual from the protections, benefits, and obligations of civil marriage solely because that person would marry a person of the same sex violates the Massachusetts Constitution." Arthur Miller, a Harvard law professor, said he thought the legislature might exploit the Court's 4–3 division to get it to accept a status much like marriage under another name. Although the arguments and the decision turned entirely on questions of state law, she cited in her discussion of the Court's duty the U.S. Supreme Court's decision the previous June in Lawrence v. Texas that invalidated sodomy laws: "Our concern is with the Massachusetts Constitution as a charter of governance for every person properly within its reach. 'Our obligation is to define the liberty of all, not to mandate our own moral code.'" She rejected the plaintiffs' contention that the state's marriage licensing law, which mentions marriage but never the gender of the parties, could be interpreted to permit same-sex marriages. The lack of a definition, she wrote, shows the legislature meant marriage in "the term's common-law and quotidian meaning".

Turning to whether the state's denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples violated the state constitution's guarantee of equal protection and due process, she noted that "The Massachusetts Constitution protects matters of personal liberty against government incursion as zealously, and often more so, than does the Federal Constitution, even where both Constitutions employ essentially the same language." Discussing the proper standard for review, she found that the Court did not need to consider whether the plaintiffs' claims merited strict scrutiny, a more thorough than usual standard of review, because the state's marriage policy did not meet the most basic standard of review, rational basis. In his January 20 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush alluded to events in Massachusetts: "Activist judges ... have begun redefining marriage by court order, without regard for the will of the people and their elected representatives. On an issue of such great consequence, the people's voice must be heard. If judges insist on forcing their arbitrary will upon the people, the only alternative left to the people would be the constitutional process. Our Nation must defend the sanctity of marriage."

A poll of Massachusetts residents taken on November 19–20 found that 50 percent supported the decision, 38 percent opposed it, and 11 percent had no opinion; 53 percent opposed the proposed constitutional amendment and 36 percent supported it; 53 percent thought the legislature should do nothing more than modify state law to conform with the SJC opinion, while 16 percent wanted the governor and legislators to resist the ruling's implementation and 23 percent wanted them to provide benefits to same-sex couples while reserving marriage to different-sex couples.

The SJC had stayed implementation of its ruling for 180 days in order to allow the legislature to respond as it found necessary. On December 11, 2003, the State Senate asked the SJC whether establishing civil unions for same-sex couples would meet the ruling's requirements. The SJC replied on February 4, 2004, that civil unions would not suffice to satisfy its finding in Goodridge. The 4 justices who formed the majority in the Goodridge decision wrote: "The dissimilitude between the terms 'civil marriage' and 'civil union' is not innocuous; it is a considered choice of language that reflects a demonstrable assigning of same-sex, largely homosexual, couples to second-class status." They continued: "For no rational reason the marriage laws of the Commonwealth discriminate against a defined class; no amount of tinkering with language will eradicate that stain."

Republican Governor Mitt Romney responded to the SJC's February 2004 statement that civil unions were an insufficient response to its ruling in Goodridge with a statement supporting an amendment to the Massachusetts state constitution to overrule the court's decision. His statement said, "the people of Massachusetts should not be excluded from a decision as fundamental to our society as the definition of marriage." Same-sex marriage took on national importance as public officials in several jurisdictions allowed more than 7,000 same-sex couples to wed, including San Francisco (February 12 – March 11); Sandoval County, New Mexico (February 20); New Paltz, New York (February 27); Multnomah County, Oregon (March 3); and Asbury Park, New Jersey (March 8).

The legislature took no action either to implement Goodridge or block its implementation before the state began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples on May 17, 2004. News coverage of that day's events in Massachusetts was extensive, though limited outside the United States. The three major networks led their evening news shows with wedding coverage and it was lead story in the Washington Post and the New York Times.

Lawsuits and proposed constitutional amendments

Opponents of the decision asked federal courts to overrule the decision. A suit filed by a conservative nonprofit organization, Liberty Counsel, on behalf of the Catholic Action League and eleven members of the legislature argued that the Supreme Judicial Court had deprived the people of Massachusetts of their right to a "Republican Form of Government" as guaranteed by Article IV of the U.S. Constitution when it refused to stay its decision to allow for a referendum to amend the state constitution. In May 2004, U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro denied their request for an injunction delaying implementation of the decision, as did the First Circuit Court of Appeals in June. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case without comment in November. Other opponents of same-sex marriage formed VoteOnMarriage.org to promote the adoption of an amendment to the state constitution banning same-sex marriage.

On June 17, 2004, GLAAD filed another suit on behalf of eight same-sex couples with ties to Massachusetts, but not residents of the state. It challenged a 1913 law that denied marriage licenses to anyone whose marriage would not be valid in their state of residence. The law was repealed on July 31, 2008.

Opponents of same-sex marriage sought to reverse the Goodridge decision by amending the state constitution, an extended process in Massachusetts requiring repeated approval by the legislature before being put to a popular vote. They used each of the two methods the Massachusetts Constitution provides. First, legislators devised their own compromise language that banned same-sex marriage and permitted civil unions with the proviso that same-sex civil unions would not qualify as marriages for federal purposes. That proposed amendment needed to be approved by a majority vote in two successive joint sessions of the legislature, but after passing the first time it failed the second time on September 14, 2005, when the compromise collapsed. Second, opponents of same-sex marriage proposed language defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman, making no reference to civil unions. By gathering enough signatures on petitions, their amendment required a vote of just 25% of the legislators in two successive joint sessions of the legislature. This amendment received the necessary votes the first time, but failed the second time when 45 legislators voted for the amendment and 151 against it on June 14, 2007.

Impact

More than 10,000 same-sex couples married in Massachusetts in the first four years after such marriages became legal on May 17, 2004. Approximately 6,100 marriages took place in the first six months, and they continued at a rate of about 1,000 per year.

On the fifth anniversary of the Goodridge decision, Mary Bonauto, who argued the case for GLAD, said that state agencies were cooperating fully with its requirements, noting that exceptions occurred in programs that received federal funding and were therefore subject to the restrictions of the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

, same-sex marriages were made federally legal across the U.S. when the Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that state bans of same-sex marriage were unconstitutional.

In the years following the Goodridge decision, some wedding celebrations have used passages from it. For example:

Plaintiffs

The plaintiffs were Gloria Bailey and Linda Davies; Maureen Brodoff and Ellen Wade; Hillary Goodridge and Julie Goodridge; Gary Chalmers and Richard Linnell; Heidi Norton and Gina Smith; Michael Horgan and Edward Balmelli; and David Wilson and Robert Compton. as did the other six plaintiff couples. The Goodridges separated amicably in July 2006 and divorced in July 2009.

See also

  • Same-sex marriage in Massachusetts
  • LGBT rights in Massachusetts

;State court decisions

  • Baker v. Vermont, 744 A.2d 864 (Vt. 1999)
  • Lewis v. Harris, 188 N.J. 415 (2006)
  • Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health, 289 Conn. 135 (2008)
  • In re Marriage Cases, 43 Cal.4th 757 (2008)
  • Varnum v. Brien, 763 N.W.2d 862 (Iowa 2009)

References

  • Copy of Decision at Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse