October 22, 2014
Private: Judge Upholds Puerto Rico Ban on Same-Sex Marriage
Caroline Fredrickson, Human Rights Campaign, Melissa Harris-Perry, Puerto Rico, Same-sex marriage
In what was clearly the exception, not the rule, a federal judge Tuesday upheld Puerto Rico’s ban on marriage equality. U.S. District Judge Juan Perez-Gimenez, ruled that 40-year-old precedent from the U.S. Supreme Court dictates courts must uphold laws against same-sex marriage. Judge Perez-Gimenez was referring to Baker v. Nelson, a 1972 marriage equality case that the Supreme Court refused to hear.
The Washington Blade reports Perez-Gimenez criticized the wave of marriage equality victories in states across the country.
"Because no right to same-gender marriage emanates from the Constitution, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico should not be compelled to recognize such unions,” Perez-Gimenez writes. “Instead, Puerto Rico, acting through its legislature, remains free to shape its own marriage policy. In a system of limited constitutional self-government such as ours, this is the prudent outcome. The people and their elected representatives should debate the wisdom of redefining marriage. Judges should not.”
Perez-Gimenez, a Carter appointee, even used the slippery slope argument, a technique long-ago abandoned by even the fiercest opponents of equality, saying, “A clear majority of courts have struck down statutes that affirm opposite-gender marriage only. In their ingenuity and imagination they have constructed a seemingly comprehensive legal structure for this new form of marriage. And yet what is lacking and unaccounted for remains: are laws barring polygamy, or, say the marriage of fathers and daughters, now of doubtful validity.”
If the plaintiff couples, represented by Lambda Legal, opt to appeal Judge Perez-Gimenez’s ruling, they will head to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which has yet to hear a marriage equality case since the landmark 2013 decision striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a ruling that has served as the precedent that began the domino dropping of marriage bans across the country.
The Supreme Court earlier this month declined to hear any of the seven marriage equality cases before them, a decision that immediately ushered marriage equality into several states bringing the number of marriage equality states to 30 plus the District of Columbia. Two more states, Idaho and Nevada, were also added to the list a few days later. An astounding 61 percent of Americans now live in states with marriage equality and that number is expected to rise very soon, according to the Human Rights Campaign.
Yesterday’s ruling in Puerto Rico seems to me merely a bump in the road in our nation’s steady march toward full LGBT equality. Earlier this month, ACS President Caroline Fredrickson was a guest on MSNBC’s “Melissa Harris-Perry” where she said the fight for marriage equality is over. She will likely be proven right in the near-future.