Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca8-05-02604/USCOURTS-ca8-05-02604-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE EIGHTH CIRCUIT

___________

No. 05-2604

___________

Citizens for Equal Protection, et al., *

*

Plaintiffs - Appellees, *

*

v. * Appeal from the United States

* District Court for the

Jon C. Bruning, Attorney General; * District of Nebraska.

Dave Heineman, Governor, in their *

official capacities, *

*

Defendants - Appellants, *

___________

Submitted: February 13, 2006

Filed: July 14, 2006

___________

Before LOKEN, Chief Judge, BOWMAN and SMITH, Circuit Judges.

___________

LOKEN, Chief Judge.

In November 2000, Nebraska voters passed by a large majority a constitutional

amendment, codified as Article I, § 29 of the Nebraska Constitution, providing: 

Only marriage between a man and a woman shall be valid or recognized

in Nebraska. The uniting of two persons of the same sex in a civil union,

domestic partnership, or other similar same-sex relationship shall not be

valid or recognized in Nebraska. 

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Amicus briefs supporting the State were submitted by certain members of the

Nebraska Legislature; the Nebraska Family Council; the Nebraska Catholic

Conference, et al; eleven other States; Alliance for Marriage, Inc.; the American

Center for Law & Justice Northeast, Inc.; American Family Association, Inc.; Focus

on the Family and Family Research Council; Liberty Counsel; The National Legal

Foundation; the Thomas More Law Center; thirty-four law professors; and United

Families International and The Center for Arizona Policy. Amicus briefs supporting

Appellees were submitted by the National Association of Social Workers and its

Nebraska Chapter; Nebraska attorney Susan Ann Koenig; the American Psychological

Association; and Certain Chapters of Parents, Families & Friends of Lesbians & Gays.

The court appreciates their participation.

-2-

Three public interest groups whose members include gay and lesbian citizens of

Nebraska commenced this action against the Governor and the Attorney General in

their official capacities seeking an order declaring that § 29 violates the Equal

Protection Clause and is an unconstitutional bill of attainder, and permanently

enjoining its enforcement. The district court denied the State’s motion to dismiss for

lack of standing and ripeness. Citizens for Equal Protection, Inc. v. Bruning, 290 F.

Supp. 2d 1004 (D. Neb. 2003). After the parties submitted the case on a Joint

Stipulation of Facts, the district court held that § 29 violates the Equal Protection

Clause, is an unconstitutional bill of attainder, and deprives gays and lesbians of their

First Amendment rights. Citizens for Equal Protection, Inc. v. Bruning, 368 F. Supp.

2d 980 (D. Neb. 2005). The State appeals.1

 We reverse. 

I. Jurisdiction Issues

On appeal, the State renews its contentions that Appellees lack standing to raise

these constitutional claims and that the claims are not ripe for review. Like the district

court, we disagree. The State argues that Appellees lack standing -- their members

have suffered no injury in fact because marriage and domestic partnership licenses are

not available to same-sex couples in Nebraska, and Appellees’ members can obtain

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the desired results through other means. However, when the government erects a

barrier making it more difficult for members of a group to obtain a benefit, “[t]he

‘injury in fact’. . . is the denial of equal treatment resulting from the imposition of the

barrier, not the ultimate inability to obtain the benefit.” N.E. Fla. Chapter of the

Assoc. General Contractors of Am. v. Jacksonville, 508 U.S. 656, 666 (1993).

Appellees allege that § 29 is such a barrier.

The State argues that the constitutional issues are not ripe for judicial review

because no court has struck down a law passed by the Nebraska Legislature as

inconsistent with § 29. The ripeness doctrine is aimed at preventing federal courts,

through premature adjudication, from “entangling themselves in abstract

disagreements.” Thomas v. Union Carbide Agr. Prods. Co., 473 U.S. 568, 580 (1985).

The Joint Stipulation of Facts recites that a bill did not advance out of legislative

committee after the Attorney General opined that it would violate § 29. Thus, the

legal issues raised in Appellees’ complaint are not premature or abstract, and the relief

sought and granted by the district court would remedy at least some of the alleged

injury. Compare Renne v. Geary, 501 U.S. 312, 316-24 (1991). For these reasons,

we conclude that, whatever the merits of their claims, Appellees have standing to raise

the claims and the dispute is, at least in part, ripe for review. 

The amicus brief submitted by eleven States makes an additional jurisdictional

argument -- that Appellees’ claims are not justiciable because neither the Governor

nor the Attorney General is responsible for the alleged injury § 29 causes Appellees,

diminished access to the legislative process. Nebraska does not adopt this contention,

but we cannot ignore a challenge to our Article III jurisdiction. See generally

Reproductive Health Serv. of Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, Inc. v.

Nixon, 428 F.3d 1139, 1145-47 (8th Cir. 2005). 

Under Nebraska law, the Governor and the Attorney General have broad

powers to enforce the State’s Constitution and statutes. See Neb. Const. Art IV, § 6;

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Neb. Rev. Stat. § 84-731. The aforementioned opinion of the Attorney General that

a proposed bill would run afoul of § 29 confirms that these broad powers include

policing compliance with this constitutional amendment. Of course, § 29 does not

require affirmative enforcement by any state official; it functions as a barrier to

government action that Appellees desire. The amicus brief argues that § 29 may be

challenged, for example, by a suit to compel a county clerk to marry two same-sex

partners. But that argument conflates the distinction noted in N.E. Florida Contractors

between challenging a barrier and having a right to the ultimate benefit. Here, as we

have explained, Appellees have standing to challenge the barrier, and the dispute is

ripe for review. Although one may question whether enjoining these two state officers

would fully redress Appellees’ alleged injuries, we agree with the concession implicit

in the State’s decision not to press this issue -- the Governor and the Attorney General

have “some connection with the enforcement” of § 29 and therefore this suit for

equitable relief falls within the exception to the State’s Eleventh Amendment

immunity established in Ex parte Young, 209 U.S. 123, 157 (1908). This satisfies the

case or controversy requirement of Article III.

II. Equal Protection

In Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996), the Supreme Court considered an

amendment to the Colorado Constitution barring all state and local governments from

allowing “homosexual, lesbian or bisexual orientation, conduct, practices or

relationships” to be the basis for a claim of “minority status, quota preferences,

protected status or claim of discrimination.” The amendment invalidated certain local

ordinances prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. The

Colorado Supreme Court held that any constitutional amendment that infringes on

“the fundamental right to participate equally in the political process [by] ‘fencing out’

an independently identifiable class of persons must be subject to strict judicial

scrutiny” under the Equal Protection Clause of the United States Constitution. Evans

v. Romer, 854 P.2d 1270, 1282 (Colo. 1993). The Colorado Supreme Court then

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affirmed a later ruling that invalidated the enactment because the State failed to

establish a compelling governmental interest satisfying strict judicial scrutiny. Evans

v. Romer, 882 P.2d 1335 (Colo. 1994). A dissent noted that “[t]he Supreme Court of

the United States has never held . . . that the right to participate equally in the political

process is a fundamental right.” Id. at 1359 (Erickson, J., dissenting). 

After granting certiorari review, the Supreme Court affirmed but “on a rationale

different from that adopted by the State Supreme Court.” 517 U.S. at 626. The

Supreme Court noted that the Colorado constitutional amendment “withdraws from

homosexuals, but no others, specific legal protection from the injuries caused by

discrimination, and it forbids reinstatement of these laws and policies.” Id. at 627.

The Court reasoned that the amendment “fails, indeed defies,” conventional equal

protection analysis because it “impos[es] a broad and undifferentiated disability on a

single named group .... [and] its sheer breadth is so discontinuous with the reasons

offered for it that the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward

the class it affects.” Id. at 632. The Court then concluded that the amendment lacked

a rational relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose:

It is a status-based enactment divorced from any factual context from

which we could discern a relationship to legitimate state interests; it is

a classification of persons undertaken for its own sake, something the

Equal Protection Clause does not permit. Id. at 635. 

Relying primarily on Romer, Appellees argue that § 29 violates the Equal

Protection Clause because it raises an insurmountable political barrier to same-sex

couples obtaining the many governmental and private sector benefits that are based

upon a legally valid marriage relationship. Appellees do not assert a right to marriage

or same-sex unions. Rather, they seek “a level playing field, an equal opportunity to

convince the people’s elected representatives that same-sex relationships deserve legal

protection.” Citizens for Equal Protection, 368 F. Supp. 2d at 985 n.1. The argument

turns on the fact that § 29 is an amendment to the Nebraska Constitution. Unlike

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Constitutional provisions that prohibit certain activities disadvantage the class

of persons who wish to engage in the activity. For example, Article III, § 24, of the

Nebraska Constitution forbids “games of chance.” Does § 24 deny casino operators

equal protection because they, unlike other businesses, must repeal a constitutional

amendment to legalize the activities they wish to conduct? Note, too, that the equalaccess theory urged by Appellees would likewise apply to a state statute that limits the

policies and laws municipalities may adopt. See Washington v. Seattle Sch. Dist. No.

1, 458 U.S. 457, 477 (1982).

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state-wide legislation restricting marriage to a man and a woman, a constitutional

amendment deprives gays and lesbians of “equal footing in the political arena”

because state and local government officials now lack the power to address issues of

importance to this minority.2

The district court agreed, concluding “that Section 29 is indistinguishable from

the Colorado constitutional amendment at issue in Romer.” 368 F. Supp. 2d at 1002.

In this part of its opinion, the district court purported to apply conventional, “rationalbasis” equal protection analysis -- “If a legislative classification or distinction neither

burdens a fundamental right nor targets a suspect class, we will uphold it so long as

it bears a rational relation to some legitimate [government] end.” Vacco v. Quill, 521

U.S. 793, 799 (1997), quoting Romer, 517 U.S. at 631. But the court in its discussion,

368 F. Supp. 2d at 997-1005, applied the same strict scrutiny analysis applied by the

Colorado Supreme Court, but not by the United States Supreme Court, in Romer.

Like the Colorado Court, the district court based its heightened scrutiny on Appellees’

“fundamental right of access to the political process.” Id. at 1003. 

As Supreme Court decisions attest, the level of judicial scrutiny to be applied

in determining the validity of state legislative and constitutional enactments under the

Fourteenth Amendment is a subject of continuing debate and disagreement among the

Justices. Though the most relevant precedents are murky, we conclude for a number

of reasons that § 29 should receive rational-basis review under the Equal Protection

Clause, rather than a heightened level of judicial scrutiny. 

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While voting rights and apportionment cases establish the fundamental right to

access the political process, it is not an absolute right. In a multi-tiered democracy,

it is inevitable that interest groups will strive to make it more difficult for competing

interest groups to achieve contrary legislative objectives. This can be done, for

example, by having the state legislature repeal a local ordinance, or by having the

electorate adopt a constitutional amendment barring future legislation. As the

Supreme Court said in upholding a state constitutional amendment in James v.

Valtierra, 402 U.S. 137, 141-43 (1971):

Provisions for referendums demonstrate devotion to democracy, not to

bias, discrimination, or prejudice. Nonetheless, appellees contend that

Article XXXIV denies them equal protection because . . . it hampers

persons desiring public housing from achieving their objective when no

such roadblock faces other groups seeking to influence other public

decisions to their advantage. . . . Under any such holding, presumably a

State would not be able to require referendums on any subject unless

referendums were required on all, because they would always

disadvantage some group. And this Court would be required to analyze

governmental structures to determine whether a gubernatorial veto

provision or a filibuster rule is likely to ‘disadvantage’ any of the diverse

and shifting groups that make up the American people.

Similarly, Justice Scalia’s discussion of the anti-polygamy provisions in many state

constitutions illustrates the chaos that would result if all enactments that allegedly

deprive a group of “equal” political access must survive the rigors of strict judicial

scrutiny. Romer, 517 U.S. at 648-51 (Scalia, J., dissenting). No doubt for these

reasons, although the majority opinion in Romer contained broad language

condemning the Colorado enactment for making it “more difficult for one group of

citizens than for all others to seek aid from the government,” 517 U.S. at 633, the

Court’s conclusion was that the enactment “lacks a rational relationship to legitimate

state interests.” Id. at 632. That is the core standard of rational-basis review. 

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If sexual orientation, like race, were a “suspect classification” for purposes of

the Equal Protection Clause, then Appellees’ focus on the political burden erected by

a constitutional amendment would find support in cases like Reitman v. Mulkey, 387

U.S. 369 (1967), Hunter v. Erickson, 393 U.S. 385 (1969), and Washington v. Seattle

Sch. Dist. No. 1, 458 U.S. 457 (1982). But the Supreme Court has never ruled that

sexual orientation is a suspect classification for equal protection purposes. The

Court’s general standard is that rational-basis review applies “where individuals in the

group affected by a law have distinguishing characteristics relevant to interests the

State has the authority to implement.” City of Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center,

473 U.S. 432, 441 (1985). As we will explain, that is the case here, and therefore

Appellees are not entitled to strict scrutiny review on this ground. 

Rational-basis review is highly deferential to the legislature or, in this case, to

the electorate that directly adopted § 29 by the initiative process. “In areas of social

and economic policy, a statutory classification that neither proceeds along suspect

lines nor infringes fundamental constitutional rights must be upheld against equal

protection challenge if there is any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could

provide a rational-basis for the classification.” F.C.C. v. Beach Communications, Inc.,

508 U.S. 307, 313 (1993). Thus, the classification created by § 29 and other laws

defining marriage as the union between one man and one woman is afforded a “strong

presumption of validity.” Heller v. Doe, 509 U.S. 312, 319 (1993). The Equal

Protection Clause “is not a license for courts to judge the wisdom, fairness, or logic

of [the voters’] choices.” Beach Communications, 508 U.S. at 313.

Our rational-basis review begins with an historical fact -- the institution of

marriage has always been, in our federal system, the predominant concern of state

government. The Supreme Court long ago declared, and recently reaffirmed, that a

State “has absolute right to prescribe the conditions upon which the marriage relation

between its own citizens shall be created, and the causes for which it may be

dissolved.” Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714, 734-35 (1878), quoted in Sosna v. Iowa,

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When the Supreme Court invalidated a state law criminalizing sodomy in

Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003), only Justice O’Connor relied on the Equal

Protection Clause, rather than the substantive component of the Due Process Clause.

Of particular relevance to this case, Justice O’Connor concluded that moral

disapproval of private, consensual homosexual conduct “is an interest that is

-9-

419 U.S. 393, 404 (1975). This necessarily includes the power to classify those

persons who may validly marry. “Surely, for example, a State may legitimately say

that no one can marry his or her sibling, that no one can marry who is not at least 14

years old, that no one can marry without first passing an examination for venereal

disease, or that no one can marry who has a living husband or wife.” Zablocki v.

Redhail, 434 U.S. 374, 392 (1978) (Stewart, J., concurring). In this constitutional

environment, rational-basis review must be particularly deferential.

The State argues that the many laws defining marriage as the union of one man

and one woman and extending a variety of benefits to married couples are rationally

related to the government interest in “steering procreation into marriage.” By

affording legal recognition and a basket of rights and benefits to married heterosexual

couples, such laws “encourage procreation to take place within the socially recognized

unit that is best situated for raising children.” The State and its supporting amici cite

a host of judicial decisions and secondary authorities recognizing and upholding this

rationale. The argument is based in part on the traditional notion that two committed

heterosexuals are the optimal partnership for raising children, which modern-day

homosexual parents understandably decry. But it is also based on a “responsible

procreation” theory that justifies conferring the inducements of marital recognition

and benefits on opposite-sex couples, who can otherwise produce children by

accident, but not on same-sex couples, who cannot. See Hernandez v. Robles, No. 86,

2006 NY Slip Op 5239 at 5-6 (N.Y. Ct. App. Jul. 6, 2006); Morrison v. Sadler, 821

N.E.2d 15, 24-26 (Ind. Ct. App. 2005). Whatever our personal views regarding this

political and sociological debate, we cannot conclude that the State’s justification

“lacks a rational relationship to legitimate state interests.” Romer, 517 U.S. at 632.3

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insufficient to satisfy rational basis review under the Equal Protection Clause,” but

she expressly noted that “other reasons exist [for the State] to promote the institution

of marriage beyond mere moral disapproval of an excluded group.” 539 U.S. at 582,

585 (O’Connor, J., concurring). The Lawrence majority, too, was careful to note that

the Texas statute at issue “does not involve whether the government must give formal

recognition to any relationship that homosexual persons seek to enter.” Id. at 578. 

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The district court rejected the State’s justification as being “at once too broad

and too narrow.” Citizens for Equal Protection, 368 F. Supp. 2d at 1002. But under

rational-basis review, “Even if the classification . . . is to some extent both

underinclusive and overinclusive, and hence the line drawn . . . imperfect, it is

nevertheless the rule that . . . perfection is by no means required.” Vance v. Bradley,

440 U.S. 93, 108 (1979). Legislatures are permitted to use generalizations so long as

“the question is at least debatable.” Heller, 509 U.S. at 326 (quotation omitted). The

package of government benefits and restrictions that accompany the institution of

formal marriage serve a variety of other purposes. The legislature -- or the people

through the initiative process -- may rationally choose not to expand in wholesale

fashion the groups entitled to those benefits. “We accept such imperfection because

it is in turn rationally related to the secondary objective of legislative convenience.”

Vance, 440 U.S. at 109.

We likewise reject the district court’s conclusion that the Colorado enactment

at issue in Romer is indistinguishable from § 29. The Colorado enactment repealed

all existing and barred all future preferential policies based on “orientation, conduct,

practices, or relationships.” The Supreme Court struck it down based upon this

“unprecedented” scope. See Romer, 517 U.S. at 626, 633. Here, § 29 limits the class

of people who may validly enter into marriage and the legal equivalents to marriage

emerging in other States -- civil unions and domestic partnerships. This focus is not

so broad as to render Nebraska’s reasons for its enactment “inexplicable by anything

but animus” towards same-sex couples. Id. at 632. 

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The court cited Art. I, § 9, cl. 3, of the Constitution, a section that applies only

to Congress. We assume the court meant to cite Art. I, § 10, which bars the States

from passing bills of attainder. The two provisions are construed identically. See

Crain v. City of Mountain Home, 611 F.2d 726, 728-29 (8th Cir. 1979); Kerr-McGee

Chem. Corp. v. Edgar, 837 F. Supp. 927, 934 n.6 (N.D. Ill. 1993). 

-11-

Appellees argue that § 29 does not rationally advance this purported state

interest because “prohibiting protection for gay people’s relationships” does not steer

procreation into marriage. This demonstrates, Appellees argue, that § 29’s only

purpose is to disadvantage gay people. But the argument disregards the expressed

intent of traditional marriage laws -- to encourage heterosexual couples to bear and

raise children in committed marriage relationships. Appellees attempt to isolate § 29

from other state laws limiting marriage to heterosexual couples. But as we have

explained, there is no fundamental right to be free of the political barrier a validly

enacted constitutional amendment erects. If the many state laws limiting the persons

who may marry are rationally related to a legitimate government interest, so is the

reinforcing effect of § 29. The barrier created by § 29 was enough to confer standing,

but Appellees’ equal protection argument fails on the merits. 

III. Bill of Attainder

The district court also concluded “that Section 29 violates the Bill of Attainder

Clause by singling out gays and lesbians for legislative punishment.” 368 F. Supp.

2d at 1005.4

 The State argues that § 29 is not a bill of attainder. We agree. 

Bills of attainder are “legislative acts, no matter what their form, that apply

either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a

way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial.” United States v. Lovett,

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The Supreme Court has frequently defined a bill of attainder as “a law that

legislatively determines guilt and inflicts punishment” without a judicial trial. 

-12-

328 U.S. 303, 315 (1946).5

 “To rise to the level of ‘punishment’ . . . harm must fall

within the traditional meaning of legislative punishment, fail to further a non-punitive

purpose, or be based on a [legislative] intent to punish.” Planned Parenthood of MidMo. v. Dempsey, 167 F.3d 458, 465 (8th Cir. 1999), citing Nixon, 433 U.S. at 473,

and Selective Serv. Sys. v. Minn. Pub. Interest Research Group, 468 U.S. 841, 852

(1984). Although the Supreme Court has broadened the historical bill of attainder

concept of punishment, it does not include “every Act of Congress or the States that

legislatively burdens some persons or groups but not all other plausible individuals.”

Nixon, 433 U.S. at 471; see Flemming v. Nestor, 363 U.S. 603, 617 (1960) (“the mere

denial of a noncontractual governmental benefit” is not punishment).

Echoing its equal protection analysis, the district court determined that § 29

inflicts punishment because it “effectively disenfranchises lesbian, gay and bisexual

people and their supporters as they can no longer petition their representatives and city

and local governments for legislative changes that would protect their relationship,

agreements, and interests.” 368 F. Supp. 2d at 1006. This political disadvantage is

certainly not punishment in the historical bill of attainder sense. See Nixon, 433 U.S.

at 474 (imprisonment, banishment, punitive confiscation of property, removal from

employment or profession). And as our rational-basis discussion makes clear, the

political harm to Appellees’ members is not punishment in the functional sense

because it serves the nonpunitive purpose of steering heterosexual procreation into

marriage, a purpose that negates any suspicion that the supporters of § 29 were

motivated solely by a desire to punish disadvantaged groups.

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The district court stated that “the Bill of Attainder analysis dovetails with the

. . . Equal Protection issues in this case.” 368 F. Supp. 2d at 1008 n.23. This reflects

an error of law because the Supreme Court has cautioned that the Bill of Attainder

Clause “was not intended to serve as a variant of the equal protection doctrine.”

Nixon, 433 U.S. at 471. On this record, we conclude that Appellees’ bill of attainder

claim is without merit.

IV. First Amendment

In addition to upholding Appellees’ equal protection and bill of attainder

claims, the district court ruled, sua sponte, “that the deprivation occasioned by the

passage of Section 29 is the deprivation of the right to associational freedom protected

by the First Amendment . . . and the right to petition the government for redress of

grievances, which encompasses the right to participate in the political process, also

protected by the First Amendment.” Citizens for Equal Protection, 368 F. Supp. 2d

at 989. The court never clarified whether it was holding that § 29 violates the First

Amendment as applied to the States. 

Appellees did not raise a First Amendment claim in the district court or on

appeal. In any event, if the question is properly before us, we conclude that § 29 does

not violate the First Amendment because (i) it “does not ‘directly and substantially’

interfere with appellees’ ability to associate” in lawful pursuit of a common goal, and

(ii) it seems “exceedingly unlikely” it will prevent persons from continuing to

associate. Lyng v. Int'l Union, 485 U.S. 360, 364-66 (1988). The district court cited

no case supporting its suggestion that the First Amendment right “to petition the

Government for a redress of grievances” is violated by an enactment that makes it

more difficult for a group with full access to the political process to successfully

advocate its views. The First Amendment guarantees the right to advocate; it does not

guarantee political success. 

 

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The district court’s opinion suggests that its discussion of First Amendment

interests was intended to capture useful First Amendment principles. The court noted

that a statute infringing First Amendment rights is subject to strict scrutiny. 368 F.

Supp. 2d at 989 n.8. Though the court claimed it did not reach the issue, it applied

what we conclude was heightened scrutiny analysis in the equal protection portion of

its opinion. As we have explained, this was error because § 29 is subject to rationalbasis review. The district court further noted that “a First Amendment deprivation

subjects the challenged enactment to examination for vagueness and overbreadth.”

Id. at 995. The court then invalidated § 29 under the Equal Protection Clause in part

for the potential overbreadth of its second sentence, id. at 1004-05, ignoring the fact

that overbreadth analysis is inconsistent with rational-basis review. This was

improper. Indeed, even when First Amendment interests are potentially affected,

“facial overbreadth has not been invoked when a limiting construction has been or

could be placed on the challenged statute.” Broadrick v. Oklahoma, 413 U.S. 601,

612 (1973); see Members of the City Council of Los Angeles v. Taxpayers for

Vincent, 466 U.S. 789, 801 (1984). Whether the second sentence might be given a

limiting construction is an issue ill-suited to facial challenge. 

V. Conclusion

In the nearly one hundred and fifty years since the Fourteenth Amendment was

adopted, to our knowledge no Justice of the Supreme Court has suggested that a state

statute or constitutional provision codifying the traditional definition of marriage

violates the Equal Protection Clause or any other provision of the United States

Constitution. Indeed, in Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972), when faced with a

Fourteenth Amendment challenge to a decision by the Supreme Court of Minnesota

denying a marriage license to a same-sex couple, the United States Supreme Court

dismissed “for want of a substantial federal question.” (Emphasis added.) There is

good reason for this restraint. As Judge Posner has observed:

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This is not to say that courts should refuse to recognize a constitutional

right merely because to do so would make them unpopular.

Constitutional rights are, after all, rights against the democratic majority.

But public opinion is not irrelevant to the task of deciding whether a

constitutional right exists. . . . If it is truly a new right, as a right to

same-sex marriage would be . . . . [judges] will have to go beyond the

technical legal materials of decision and consider moral, political,

empirical, prudential, and institutional issues, including the public

acceptability of a decision recognizing the new right.

Richard A. Posner, Should There Be Homosexual Marriage? And If So, Who Should

Decide?, 95 Mich. L. Rev. 1578, 1585 (1997). 

As we have explained, Appellees’ attempt to isolate § 29 from laws prohibiting

same-sex marriage because it is a state constitutional amendment fails. If there is no

constitutional right to same-sex marriage, that is, if a statutory prohibition satisfies

rational-basis review, then § 29 likewise survives rational-basis review. We hold that

§ 29 and other laws limiting the state-recognized institution of marriage to

heterosexual couples are rationally related to legitimate state interests and therefore

do not violate the Constitution of the United States.

The judgment of the district court is reversed and the case is remanded with

directions to dismiss Appellees’ complaint with prejudice. Given our decision on the

merits, Appellees are no longer “prevailing parties.” The district court’s award of

attorneys fees is therefore reversed. See Buckhannon Bd. & Care Home, Inc. v. W.

Va. Dept. of Health & Human Resources, 532 U.S. 598, 604 (2001). 

______________________________

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