Opinion ID: 1477292
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Individuality of Rights Argument Presented by Appellees

Text: Appellees counter the equal application theory by stating that the proper inquiry in this case is not whether Family Law § 2-201 singles out one sex or the other as a discrete class for disparate treatment. Rather, because constitutional rights are individual rights, the same-sex couples posit that this Court should examine how the legislative enactment affects individually each person seeking to marry. Appellees rely principally in support of this argument on Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010 (1967), the landmark U.S. Supreme Court equal protection case in which the Court held unconstitutional a Virginia miscegenation statute despite the fact that the statute punish[ed] equally both the white and the Negro participants in an interracial marriage. [28] Loving, 388 U.S. at 8, 11-12, 87 S.Ct. at 1822, 1823, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010; see also McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184, 188, 85 S.Ct. 283, 286, 13 L.Ed.2d 222 (1964). The analogy to the present case is inapt. We must concede at the outset that the mere equal application of a statute does not shield automatically a discriminatory statute from constitutional review under either the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the equal protection provisions embodied in Article 24 of the Maryland Declaration of Rights, [29] or the ERA. See McLaughlin, 379 U.S. at 191, 85 S.Ct. at 288, 13 L.Ed.2d 222; Loving, 388 U.S. at 8, 87 S.Ct. at 1822, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010. By the same token, however, a statute does not become unconstitutional simply because, in some manner, it makes reference to race or sex. See Massage Parlors, Inc. v. Mayor & City Council of Balt., 284 Md. 490, 398 A.2d 52 (1979) (upholding the constitutionality, pursuant to Article 46, of a Baltimore City ordinance that prohibited massage parlors from providing treatment simultaneously to persons of the opposite sex in the same room, but declining to reach on procedural grounds a separate challenge to the constitutionality of a regulation promulgated pursuant to the ordinance that allegedly prohibited heterosexual massages as between the masseuse/masseur and client). In Loving, the issue before the Court was the constitutionality of a Virginia statutory scheme prohibiting marriage between non-Caucasians and Caucasians, and providing for criminal penalties for violations. In support of the statute, the State of Virginia argued that, even though reference was made to race in determining who was entitled to marry, it punished equally both participants in the interracial marriage. Loving, 388 U.S. at 8, 87 S.Ct. at 1821, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010. The Supreme Court was able to see beyond the superficial neutrality of the legislative enactment, however, and determined that [t]he fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. Loving, 388 U.S. at 11, 87 S.Ct. at 1823, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010. Thus, the Court in Loving determined that, although the statute applied on its face equally to all races, the underlying purpose was to sustain White Supremacy and to subordinate African-Americans and other non-Caucasians as a class. The reasoning behind this conclusion was based, at least in part, on the fact that [w]hile Virginia prohibits whites from marrying any nonwhite . . ., Negroes, Orientals, and any other racial class may intermarry without statutory interference. Loving, 388 U.S. at 11 n. 11, 87 S.Ct. at 1823 n. 11, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010. [30] The test to evaluate whether a facially gender-neutral statute discriminates on the basis of sex is whether the law `can be traced to a discriminatory purpose.' Baker, 744 A.2d at 880 n. 13 (quoting Personnel Adm'r of Mass. v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 272, 99 S.Ct. 2282, 2293, 60 L.Ed.2d 870 (1979)). And while [t]he clear and central purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to eliminate all official state sources of invidious racial discrimination in the States, Loving; 388 U.S. at 11, 87 S.Ct. at 1823, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010, the primary purpose behind Article 46 is to frustrate state action that separates men and women into discrete classes for disparate treatment as between the sexes. Absent some showing that Family Law § 2-201 was designed to subordinate either men to women or women to men as a class, Hernandez, 821 N.Y.S.2d 770, 855 N.E.2d at 11 (This is not the kind of sham equality that the Supreme Court confronted in Loving; the statute there . . . was in substance anti-black legislation.), we find the analogy to Loving inapposite. See also, e.g., Baker v. Nelson, 291 Minn. 310, 191 N.W.2d 185, 187 (1971) (determining that Virginia's antimiscegenation statute, prohibiting interracial marriages, was invalidated solely on the grounds of its patent racial discrimination.). Because there is no evidence in the record before us that the Legislature intended with Family Law § 2-201 to differentiate between men and women as classes on the basis of some misconception regarding gender roles in our society, we conclude that the ERA does not mandate that the State recognize same-sex marriage based on the analogy to Loving. See In re Kandu, 315 B.R. 123, 143 (Bankr.W.D.Wash.2004) (There is no evidence, from the voluminous legislative history or otherwise, that DOMA's purpose is to discriminate against men or women as a class.); Andersen, 138 P.3d at 989; Baker v. Vermont, 744 A.2d at 880 n. 13 (concluding that the evidence on the record before the court did not demonstrate that the authors of the marriage laws excluded same-sex couples because of incorrect and discriminatory assumptions about gender roles or anxiety about gender-role confusion); Singer v. Hara, 11 Wash.App. 247, 522 P.2d 1187, 1191-92 (1974) ([There] is no analogous sexual classification involved in the instant case because appellants are not being denied entry into the marriage relationship because of their sex; rather, they are being denied entry into the marriage relationship because of the recognized definition of that relationship as one that may be entered into only by two persons who are members of the opposite sex.), review denied, 84 Wash.2d 1008 (1974). [31]