Opinion ID: 1111406
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 11

Heading: A Different Story: Baehr v. Lewin

Text: The plurality expresses the view that a distinct approach[] to the right to privacy... was applied by this court in ... Mueller ... and later by the plurality in Baehr v. Lewin, 74 Haw. 530, 852 P.2d 44, reconsideration granted in part, 74 Haw. 650, 875 P.2d 225 (1993). Plurality opinion at 443, 950 P.2d at 181. The  Mueller/Baehr approach, as the plurality calls it, has in the past been applied ... in rejecting claims that certain acts are protected by the right to privacy. Id. at 443, 950 P.2d at 181. The plurality therefore applies the  Mueller/Baehr approach to conclude that the right to possess and use marijuana cannot be considered a `fundamental' right that is `implicit in the concept of ordered liberty' and that smoking marijuana is not a part of the `traditions and collective conscience of our people.' Id. at 445, 950 P.2d at 183. I do not wish to regurgitate my analysis of the Mueller decision's misreading of the constitutional history underlying the promulgation of article I, section 6 or its misguided use of the fallacy of trivialization, both of which are set forth supra in section II.B.1. But because I authored the plurality opinion in Baehr, I feel compelled to express and explain my view that the plurality is misapplying Baehr and unfairly linking it to Mueller for purposes of this appeal. As I stated at the outset of this opinion, the core question presented by this appeal is whether, as a matter of constitutional law, the police power of the state extends to criminalizing mere possession of marijuana for personal use. The core issue in Mueller was whether the State invaded a constitutionally protected area of privacy when it prosecuted [the defendant] for prostitution on the basis of sexual conduct involving two consenting adults and occurring in [the defendant's] home. Mueller, 66 Haw. at 618, 671 P.2d at 1353 (emphasis added). Thus, the matter of the constitutional limitation on the sovereign police power of the state to criminalize purely self-regarding conduct, as further circumscribed by the expressly enumerated, fundamental constitutional right to privacy, was central to the resolution of Mueller, just as it is to the present appeal. The significance of the privacy analysis in Baehr, however, was quite different. For present purposes, the relevant issue in Baehr was not whether the state's police power permitted the criminalization of any particular conduct, but whether the `right to marry' protected by article I, section 6 of the Hawaii Constitution extend[ed] to same-sex couples. Baehr, 74 Haw. at 552, 852 P.2d at 55 (emphasis added). At stake was affirmative access by same-sex couples to marriage as a state-conferred legal status, the existence of which gives rise to rights and benefits reserved exclusively to that particular relationship. Id. at 559, 852 P.2d at 58 (emphasis added). In this connection, Baehr recognized that the police power to regulate marriage is a sovereign function reserved exclusively to the respective states. By its very nature, the power to regulate the marriage relation includes the power to determine the requisites of a valid marriage contract and to control the qualifications of the contracting parties, the forms and procedures necessary to solemnize the marriage, the duties and obligations it creates, its effect upon property and other rights, and the grounds for marital dissolution. ... So zealously has this court guarded the state's role as the exclusive progenitor of the marital partnership that it declared, over seventy years ago, that common law marriages  i.e., marital unions existing in the absence of a state-issued license and not performed by a person or society possessing governmental authority to solemnize marriages  would no longer be recognized in the Territory of Hawaii. Id. at 558-59, 852 P.2d at 58 (citations and footnote omitted) (emphases added). In construing the application of article I, section 6 to the precise question presented, Baehr reviewed the constitutional history underlying the promulgation of article I, section 6, id. at 551-52, 852 P.2d at 55, and came to the conclusion that,  at a minimum, article I, section 6 of the Hawaii Constitution encompasses all of the fundamental rights expressly recognized as being subsumed within the privacy protections of the United States Constitution. Id. at 552, 852 P.2d at 55 (emphasis added). Correlatively, Baehr observed that the United States Supreme Court has declared that `the right to marry is part of the fundamental right of privacy implicit in the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause.' Id. (quoting Zablocki v. Redhail, 434 U.S. 374, 384, 98 S.Ct. 673, 680, 54 L.Ed.2d 618 (1978)). In reviewing the high court's relevant case law for guidance on the subject, Baehr acknowledged the indisputable fact that the federal construct of the fundamental right to marry  subsumed within the right to privacy implicitly protected by the United States Constitution  presently contemplates unions between men and women. Id. at 552, 555, 852 P.2d at 55-56. Thus, Baehr characterized the precise question facing this court as whether we will extend the present boundaries of the fundamental right of marriage to include same-sex couples, or, put another way, whether we will hold that same-sex couples possess a fundamental right to marry. Id. at 555, 852 P.2d at 56-57 (emphasis in original). Within this context, Baehr adopted the approach articulated by Justice Goldberg, concurring in Griswold, for determining which rights are fundamental, namely, that courts must look to the `traditions and [collective] conscience of our people' to determine whether a principle is `so deeply rooted [there]... as to be ranked as fundamental.' ... The inquiry is whether a right involved `is of such a character that it cannot be denied without violating those fundamental principles of liberty and justice which lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions....' Id. at 556, 852 P.2d at 57 (quoting Griswold, 381 U.S. at 493, 85 S.Ct. at 1686 (Goldberg, J., concurring) (citations omitted)) (brackets and ellipsis points in original). Based on Justice Goldberg's conceptual framework, Baehr stated that we do not believe that a right to same-sex marriage is so rooted in the traditions and collective conscience of our people that failure to recognize it would violate the fundamental principles of liberty and justice that lie at the base of all our civil and political institutions. Neither do we believe that a right to same-sex marriage is implicit in the concept of ordered liberty, such that neither liberty nor justice would exist if it were sacrificed. Accordingly, we hold that the applicant couples do not have a fundamental constitutional right to same-sex marriage arising out of the right to privacy or otherwise. Id. at 556-57, 852 P.2d at 57 (emphasis added). I believed in Baehr, and I continue to believe, that Justice Goldberg's construct, as delineated in Griswold, was the correct yardstick by which to glean the existence of a newly perceived and constitutionally fundamental right of affirmative access to a legal status that is within the state's exclusive police power to regulate. This belief is consistent with my concession, see supra note 58, that the  Roe principle makes sense when applied to the United States Constitution, inasmuch as the right of privacy is nowhere expressly stated but, rather, is perceived to have emanated from the penumbra surrounding other enumerated rights contained within the federal bill of rights, all of which are, themselves, fundamental or implicit in the concept of ordered liberty. I repeat, however, Justice Levinson's self-evident observation that, with respect to the extent of the state's police power, [r]egulation and prohibition are not coextensive. Kantner, 53 Haw. at 346, 493 P.2d at 317 (Levinson, J., dissenting). I also reiterate what was amply demonstrated supra in section II.A, namely, that it is apparent from the history of the genesis of article I, section 6 that the newly expressed fundamental constitutional right to privacy was intended to protect the rights of the individual to personal autonomy, to dictate his or her own lifestyle, and to selfhood  rights that were deemed by the framers to be highly personal and intimate affairs of a person's life and that are subsumed within the general right to be left alone. The right to be let alone, by its very nature, is a right to be free from the unwarranted exercise of the awesome police power of the state. It has been reported that every survey of adult Americans willing to identify themselves as lesbian or gay finds that a majority or near majority are living currently with a partner. Increasing numbers of these couples are celebrating their relationships in ceremonies of commitment. Those who participate commonly refer to the ceremonies as weddings and to themselves as married, even though they know that the ceremonies are not legally recognized by the laws of any state. David L. Chambers, What If? The Legal Consequences of Marriage and the Legal Needs of Lesbian and Gay Male Couples, 95 Mich. L.Rev. 447, 449 (1996) (footnotes omitted). See generally Lesbian and Gay Marriage: Private Commitments, Public Ceremonies (Suzanne Sherman ed., Temple Univ. Press 1992). Such weddings are often performed by ordained clergy. See e.g., Lesbian and Gay Marriage at 241-79. Suppose that the legislature were to enact a statute that sought to subject the participants in such single most significant communal ceremon[ies] of belonging, see What If? at 450, to criminal penalties. Would the plurality cite Baehr  as, by its attempted analogy, it conceivably could cite Mueller  as authority for upholding the constitutionality of the statute, as a legitimate exercise of the state's police power, on the basis of Baehr 's holding that there is no fundamental constitutional right to same-sex marriage arising out of the right to privacy or otherwise? I hope and think not.