Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
Page Number: 22.0

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

17 

Opinion of the Court 

basis  for  an  expanding  list  of  governmental  rights,  bene-
fits,  and  responsibilities.    These  aspects  of  marital  status 
include: taxation; inheritance and property rights; rules of 
intestate  succession;  spousal  privilege  in  the  law  of  evi-
dence;  hospital  access;  medical  decisionmaking  authority;
adoption rights; the rights and benefits of survivors; birth
and death certificates; professional ethics rules; campaign
finance  restrictions;  workers’  compensation  benefits; 
health  insurance;  and  child  custody,  support,  and  visita-
tion  rules.  See  Brief  for  United  States  as  Amicus  Curiae 
6–9; Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 
8–29.  Valid marriage under state law is also a significant 
status  for  over  a  thousand  provisions  of  federal  law.    See 
Windsor,  570  U. S.,  at  ___  –  ___  (slip  op.,  at  15–16).    The 
States  have  contributed  to  the  fundamental  character  of 
the marriage right by placing that institution at the center
of so many facets of the legal and social order.

There  is  no  difference  between  same-  and  opposite-sex 
couples  with  respect  to  this  principle.    Yet  by  virtue  of
their exclusion from that institution, same-sex couples are 
denied  the  constellation  of  benefits  that  the  States  have 
linked  to  marriage.  This  harm  results  in  more  than  just 
material  burdens.  Same-sex  couples  are  consigned  to  an
instability many opposite-sex couples would deem intoler-
able in their own lives.  As the State itself makes marriage
all  the  more  precious  by  the  significance  it  attaches  to  it,
exclusion  from  that  status  has  the  effect  of  teaching  that
gays  and  lesbians  are  unequal  in  important  respects.    It 
demeans gays and lesbians for the State to lock them out
of  a  central  institution  of  the  Nation’s  society.  Same-sex 
couples,  too,  may  aspire  to  the  transcendent  purposes  of
marriage and seek fulfillment in its highest meaning. 

The  limitation  of  marriage  to  opposite-sex  couples  may 
long  have  seemed  natural  and  just,  but  its  inconsistency 
with  the  central  meaning  of  the  fundamental  right  to
marry  is  now  manifest.  With  that  knowledge  must  come