Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
Page Number: 24.0

Cite as:  576 U. S. ____ (2015) 

19 

Opinion of the Court 

alone.  They rise, too, from a better informed understand-
ing of how constitutional imperatives define a liberty that
remains urgent in our own era.  Many who deem same-sex 
marriage  to  be  wrong  reach  that  conclusion  based  on
decent  and  honorable  religious  or  philosophical  premises,
and  neither  they  nor  their  beliefs  are  disparaged  here.
But  when  that  sincere,  personal  opposition  becomes  en- 
acted law and public policy, the necessary consequence is to
put the imprimatur of the State itself on an exclusion that 
soon  demeans  or  stigmatizes  those  whose  own  liberty  is 
then  denied.  Under  the  Constitution,  same-sex  couples
seek in marriage the same legal treatment as opposite-sex
couples, and it would disparage their choices and diminish
their personhood to deny them this right.

The  right  of  same-sex  couples  to  marry  that  is  part  of 
the  liberty  promised  by  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  is
derived,  too,  from  that  Amendment’s  guarantee  of  the
equal protection of the laws.  The Due Process Clause and 
the  Equal  Protection  Clause  are  connected  in  a  profound
way, though they set forth independent principles.  Rights
implicit  in  liberty  and  rights  secured  by  equal  protection
may  rest  on  different  precepts  and  are  not  always  co-
extensive,  yet  in  some  instances  each  may  be  instructive
as to the meaning and reach of the other.  In any particu-
lar case one Clause may be thought to capture the essence 
of  the  right  in  a  more  accurate  and  comprehensive  way,
even as the two Clauses may converge in the identification 
and definition of the right.  See M. L. B., 519 U. S., at 120– 
121;  id.,  at  128–129  (KENNEDY,  J.,  concurring  in  judg-
ment); Bearden v. Georgia, 461 U. S. 660, 665 (1983).  This 
interrelation  of  the  two  principles  furthers  our  under-
standing of what freedom is and must become.

The  Court’s  cases  touching  upon  the  right  to  marry 
reflect  this  dynamic.  In  Loving  the  Court  invalidated  a 
prohibition  on  interracial  marriage  under  both  the  Equal 
Protection Clause and the Due Process Clause.  The Court