Idaho’s ban on marriage equality struck down as unconstitutional by federal judge

Mar­riage equal­i­ty appears well on its way to becom­ing the law of the land through­out our entire region with the joy­ous news tonight that the chief U.S. Mag­is­trate Judge for the Dis­trict of Ida­ho, Can­dy W. Dale, has struck down Ida­ho’s ban on mar­riage between LGBT cou­ples as unconstitutional.

“Idaho’s mar­riage laws with­hold from them a pro­found and per­son­al choice, one that most can take for grant­ed,” Judge Dale wrote in her decision.

She added, “By doing so, Idaho’s mar­riage laws deny same-sex cou­ples the eco­nom­ic, prac­ti­cal, emo­tion­al, and spir­i­tu­al ben­e­fits of mar­riage, rel­e­gat­ing each cou­ple to a stig­ma­tized, sec­ond-class sta­tus. Plain­tiffs suf­fer these injuries not because they are unqual­i­fied to mar­ry, start a fam­i­ly, or grow old togeth­er, but because of who they are and whom they love.”

Ida­ho’s Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor, Butch Otter, has already vowed to appeal the deci­sion, all the way to the Unit­ed States Supreme Court if nec­es­sary. How­ev­er, unless Otter wins a stay by 9 AM this Fri­day morn­ing, LGBT cou­ples will be able to wed in Idaho.

Evan Wolf­son of Free­dom to Mar­ry enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly praised Dale’s deci­sion in a state­ment sent to NPI a short time after the rul­ing was released.

“Today’s rul­ing from the fed­er­al court in Ida­ho is the lat­est in more than a dozen rul­ings unan­i­mous­ly hold­ing mar­riage dis­crim­i­na­tion uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. From Ida­ho to Arkansas, Utah to Michi­gan, the courts are affirm­ing that there is no good rea­son for gov­ern­ment to deny mar­riage to com­mit­ted cou­ples,” Wolf­son said.

“As gay cou­ples and their fam­i­lies begin to share in the joy and secu­ri­ty of the free­dom to mar­ry, hearts and minds are open­ing, dis­crim­i­na­tion’s bar­ri­ers are falling, and we’re mov­ing our coun­try to the right side of history.”

Wash­ing­ton became the first state in the Pacif­ic North­west to embrace mar­riage equal­i­ty when vot­ers upheld SB 6239 by approv­ing Ref­er­en­dum 74 in 2012. Pre­vi­ous­ly, vot­ers had blessed the “every­thing but mar­riage” law passed by the Leg­is­la­ture in 2009, which per­mit­ted LGBT cou­ples to form civ­il unions, but not mar­ry. A pre­vi­ous effort to over­turn the state’s statu­to­ry ban on mar­riage equal­i­ty before the state Supreme Court (Ander­sen v. King Coun­ty) was unsuccessful.

Ida­ho’s ban on mar­riage equal­i­ty is at the end of Arti­cle III, which per­tains to the state’s leg­isla­tive depart­ment. It reads as follows:

Sec­tion 28. Mar­riage. A mar­riage between a man and a woman is the only domes­tic legal union that shall be valid or rec­og­nized in this state.

It is a well-estab­lished prin­ci­ple of Amer­i­can law that state con­sti­tu­tions may not con­flict with the Con­sti­tu­tion of the Unit­ed States. A state con­sti­tu­tion may give the peo­ple of a state greater pro­tec­tions than what the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vides, but not less. The U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion is the min­i­mum baseline.

Last year, in Unit­ed States v. Wind­sor, the Unit­ed States Supreme Court struck down the fed­er­al lev­el ban on mar­riage equal­i­ty. Since then, fed­er­al courts across the coun­try have been inval­i­dat­ing state lev­el bans on mar­riage equal­i­ty with breath­tak­ing speed. Judge Dale’s rul­ing is the newest.

But it’s not like­ly to stay the newest for very long. In fact, a fed­er­al judge is sched­uled to hear oral argu­ments tomor­row in a pair of con­sol­i­dat­ed cas­es chal­leng­ing Ore­gon’s ban on mar­riage equal­i­ty. Bar­ring a deci­sion by a week from this Fri­day, activists in Ore­gon are pre­pared to sub­mit sig­na­tures to place a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment on the bal­lot to reverse the amend­ment adopt­ed in 2004 that defines mar­riage as between a male and a female.

We’ll have more reac­tion to this news as we get it.