Opinion ID: 2743619
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Idaho and Nevada’s Same-Sex Marriage

Text: Prohibitions Fail Under Intermediate Scrutiny For Idaho and Nevada’s same-sex marriage prohibitions to survive the intermediate scrutiny applicable to sex discriminatory laws, it must be shown that these laws “serve important governmental objectives and [are] substantially related to achievement of those objectives.” Craig, 429 U.S. at 197. “The purpose of requiring that close relationship is to assure that the validity of a classification is determined through reasoned analysis rather than through the mechanical application of traditional, often inaccurate, assumptions about the proper roles of men and women.” Hogan, 458 U.S. at 725–26. LATTA V. OTTER 73 In part, the interests advanced by the defendants fail because they are interests in promoting and enforcing gender stereotyping and so simply are not legitimate governmental interests. And even if we assume that the other governmental objectives cited by the defendants are legitimate and important, the defendants have not shown that the same-sex marriage prohibitions are substantially related to achieving any of them. The asserted interests fall into roughly three categories: (1) ensuring children are raised by parents who provide them with the purported benefits of “gender complementarity,” also referred to as “gender diversity”; (2) “furthering the stability of family structures through benefits targeted at couples possessing biological procreative capacity,” and/or discouraging “motherlessness” or “fatherlessness in the home”; and (3) promoting a “child-centric” rather than “adult-centric” model of marriage.”8 The defendants insist that “genderless marriage run[s] counter to . . . [these] norms and ideals,” which is why “man-woman marriage” must be preserved. 8 The defendants also assert that the state has an interest in “accommodating religious freedom and reducing the potential for civic strife.” But, as the Opinion of the Court notes, even if allowing same-sex marriage were likely to lead to religious strife, which is highly doubtful, to say the least, that fact would not justify the denial of equal protection inherent in the gender-based classification of the same-sex marriage bars. See Watson v. City of Memphis, 373 U.S. 526, 535 (1963) (rejecting the city’s proffered justification that delay in desegregating park facilities was necessary to avoid interracial “turmoil,” and explaining “constitutional rights may not be denied simply because of hostility to their assertion or exercise”). 74 LATTA V. OTTER The Opinion of the Court thoroughly demonstrates why all of these interests are without merit as justifications for sexual orientation discrimination. I add this brief analysis only to show that the justifications are likewise wholly insufficient under intermediate scrutiny to support the sexbased classifications at the core of these laws. A. The Idaho defendants assert that the state has an interest in ensuring children have the benefit of parental “gender complementarity.” There must be “space in the law for the distinct role of ‘mother’ [and] the distinct role of ‘father’ and therefore of their united, complementary role in raising offspring,” the Idaho defendants insist. On a slightly different tack, the Nevada intervenors similarly opine that “[s]ociety has long recognized that diversity in education brings a host of benefits to students,” and ask, “[i]f that is true in education, why not in parenting?” Under the constitutional sex-discrimination jurisprudence of the last forty years, neither of these purported justifications can possibly pass muster as a justification for sex discrimination. Indeed, these justifications are laden with the very “‘baggage of sexual stereotypes’” the Supreme Court has repeatedly disavowed. Califano v. Westcott, 443 U.S. at 89 (quoting Orr, 440 U.S. at 283). (i) It should be obvious that the stereotypic notion “that the two sexes bring different talents to the parenting enterprise,” runs directly afoul of the Supreme Court’s repeated disapproval of “generalizations about ‘the way women are,’” VMI, 518 U.S. at 550, or “the way men are,” as a basis for legislation. Just as Orr, 440 U.S. at 279–80, rejected gender-disparate alimony statutes “as effectively announcing the State’s preference for an allocation of family LATTA V. OTTER 75 responsibilities under which the wife plays a dependent role,” so a state preference for supposed gender-specific parenting styles cannot serve as a legitimate reason for a sex-based classification. This conclusion would follow “[e]ven [if] some statistical support can be conjured up for the generalization” that men and women behave differently as marital partners and/or parents, because laws that rely on gendered stereotypes about how men and women behave (or should behave) must be reviewed under intermediate scrutiny. See J.E.B., 511 U.S. at 140. It has even greater force where, as here, the supposed difference in parenting styles lacks reliable empirical support, even “on average.”9 Communicating such archaic genderrole stereotypes to children, or to parents and potential parents, is not a legitimate governmental interest, much less a substantial one. (ii) The assertion that preserving “man-woman marriage” is permissible because the state has a substantial interest in promoting “diversity” has no more merit than the “gender complementarity” justification. Diversity is assuredly a weighty interest in the context of public educational institutions, with hundreds or thousands of individuals. But “[t]he goal of community diversity has no place . . . as a requirement of marriage,” which, by law, is a private institution consisting only of two persons. Baker v. State, 744 A.2d at 910 (Johnson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). “To begin with, carried to its logical 9 As one of the plaintiffs’ expert psychologists, Dr. Michael Lamb, explained, “[t]here . . . is no empirical support for the notion that the presence of both male and female role models in the home enhances the adjustment of children and adolescents.” 76 LATTA V. OTTER conclusion, the [Nevada intervenors’] rationale could require all marriages to be between [two partners], not just of the opposite sex, but of different races, religions, national origins, and so forth, to promote diversity.” Id. Such an absurd requirement would obviously be unconstitutional. See Loving, 388 U.S. 1. Moreover, even if it were true that, on average, women and men have different perspectives on some issues because of different life experiences, individual couples are at least as likely to exhibit conformity as diversity of personal characteristics. Sociological research suggests that individual married couples are more likely to be similar to each other in terms of political ideology, educational background, and economic background than they are to be dissimilar; despite the common saying that “opposites attract,” in actuality it appears that “like attracts like.” See, e.g., John R. Alford et al., The Politics of Mate Choice, 73:2 J. Politics 362, 376 (2011) (“[S]pousal concordance in the realm of social and political attitudes is extremely high.”); Jeremy Greenwood et al., Marry Your Like: Assortative Mating and Income Inequality (Population Studies Ctr., Univ. Of Penn., Working Paper No. 14-1, at 1, 2014) (Since the 1960s, “the degree of assortative mating [with regard to educational level] has increased.”). Further, there is no evidence of which I am aware that gender is a better predictor of diversity of viewpoints or of parenting styles than other characteristics. Such “gross generalizations that would be deemed impermissible if made on the basis of race [do not become] somehow permissible when made on the basis of gender.” J.E.B., 511 U.S. at 139–40. In short, the defendants’ asserted state interests in “gender complementarity” and “gender diversity” are not legitimate LATTA V. OTTER 77 “important governmental objectives.” See Craig, 429 U.S. at 197. Accordingly, I do not address whether excluding samesex couples from marriage is substantially related to this goal. B. The defendants also argue that their states have an important interest in “encouraging marriage between opposite-sex partners” who have biological children, so that those children are raised in an intact marriage rather than in a cohabiting or single-parent household. Assuming that this purpose is in fact a “important governmental objective,” the defendants have entirely failed to explain how excluding same-sex couples from marriage is substantially related to achieving the objective of furthering family stability. (i) I will interpret the asserted state goal in preventing “fatherlessness” and “motherlessness” broadly. That is, I shall assume that the states want to discourage parents from abandoning their children by encouraging dual parenting over single parenting. If the asserted purpose were instead read narrowly, as an interest in ensuring that a child has both a mother and a father in the home (rather than two mothers or two fathers), the justification would amount to the same justification as the asserted interest in “gender complementarity,” and would fail for the same reason. That is, the narrower version of the family stability justification rests on impermissible gender stereotypes about the relative capacities of men and women. Discouraging single parenting by excluding same-sex couples from marriage is oxymoronic, in the sense that it will likely achieve exactly the opposite of what the states say they seek to accomplish. The defendants’ own evidence suggests that excluding same-sex couples from marriage renders their 78 LATTA V. OTTER unions less stable, increasing the risk that the children of those couples will be raised by one parent rather than two. True, an increasing number of children are now born and raised outside of marriage, a development that may well be undesirable.10 But that trend began apace well before the advent of same-sex marriage and has been driven by entirely different social and legal developments. The trend can be traced to declines in marriage rates, as well as to the rise in divorce rates after the enactment of “no fault” divorce regimes in the late 1960s and early 1970s. “The proportion of adults who declined to marry at all rose substantially between 1972 and 1998 . . . . [In the same period,] [t]he divorce rate rose more furiously, to equal more than half the marriage rate, portending that at least one in two marriages would end in divorce.” Cott, Public Vows, at 203. The defendants’ assertion that excluding same-sex couples from marriage will do anything to reverse these trends is utterly unsubstantiated. (ii) The defendants’ appeal to biology is similarly without merit. Their core assertion is that the states have a substantial interest in channeling opposite-sex couples into marriage, so that any accidentally produced children are more likely to be raised in a two-parent household. But the exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits and obligations of state-sanctioned marriage is assuredly not 10 According to the defendants, “[b]etween 1970 and 2005, the proportion of children living with two married parents dropped from 85 percent to 68 percent,” and as of 2008, “[m]ore than a third of all U.S. children [were] . . . born outside of wedlock.” See Benjamin Scafidi, Institute for American Values, The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed Childbearing: First-Ever Estimates for the Nation and All Fifty States 7 (2008). LATTA V. OTTER 79 “substantially related,” Craig, 429 U.S. at 197, to achieving that goal. The reason only opposite-sex couples should be allowed to marry, we are told by the defendants, is that they “possess the unique ability to create new life.” But both same-sex and opposite-sex couples can and do produce children biologically related only to one member of the couple, via assisted reproductive technology or otherwise. And both same-sex and opposite-sex couples adopt children, belying the notion that the two groups necessarily differ as to their biological connection to the children they rear. More importantly, the defendants “cannot explain how the failure of opposite-sex couples to accept responsibility for the children they create relates at all to the exclusion of same-sex couples from the benefits of marriage.” Baker, 744 A.2d at 911 (Johnson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). For one thing, marriage has never been restricted to oppositesex couples able to procreate; as noted earlier, the spousal relationship, economic and otherwise, has always been understood as a sufficient basis for state approval and regulation. See supra pp. 65–68. For another, to justify sex discrimination, the state must explain why the discriminatory feature is closely related to the state interest. See Hogan, 458 U.S. at 725–26. The states thus would have to explain, without reliance on sex-stereotypical notions, why the bans on same-sex marriage advance their interests in inducing more biological parents to marry each other. No such showing has been or can be made. Biological parents’ inducements to marry will remain exactly what they have always been if same-sex couples can marry. The legal benefits of marriage—taxation, spousal 80 LATTA V. OTTER support, inheritance rights, familial rights to make decisions concerning the illness and death of a spouse, and so on—will not change. See, e.g., Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 95–96 (1987). The only change will be that now-excluded couples will enjoy the same rights. As the sex-based exclusion of same-sex couples from marrying does not in any way enhance the marriage benefits available to opposite-sex couples, that exclusion does not substantially advance—or advance at all—the state interest in inducing opposite-sex couples to raise their biological children within a stable marriage. (iii) Finally, the defendants argue that “the traditional marriage institution” or “man-woman marriage . . . is relatively but decidedly more child-centric” than “genderless marriage,” which they insist is “relatively but decidedly more adult-centric.” These assertions are belied by history. As I have noted, see supra pp. 65–71, “traditional marriage” was in fact quite “adult-centric.” Marriage was, above all, an economic arrangement between spouses. See, e.g., Cott, Public Vows, at 54. Whether or not there were children, the law imposed support obligations, inheritance rules, and other rights and burdens upon married men and women. Moreover, couples unwilling or unable to procreate have never been prevented from marrying. Nor was infertility generally recognized as a ground for divorce or annulment under the old fault-based regime, even though sexual impotence was. See, e.g., Vernier, I §50, II § 68. Further, the social concept of “companionate marriage”—that is, legal marriage for companionship purposes without the possibility of children—has existed LATTA V. OTTER 81 since at least the 1920s. See Christina Simmons, Making Marriage Modern: Women’s Sexuality from the Progressive Era to World War II 121 (2009). The Supreme Court called on this concept when it recognized the right of married couples to use contraception in 1965. Griswold, 381 U.S. at 486. Griswold reasoned that, with or without procreation, marriage was “an association for as noble a purpose as any.” Id. Same-sex marriage is thus not inherently less “childcentric” than “traditional marriage.”11 In both versions, the couple may bear or adopt and raise children, or not. Finally, a related notion the defendants advance, that allowing same-sex marriage will render the marriage institution “genderless,” in the sense that gender roles within opposite-sex marriages will be altered, is also ahistorical. As I have explained, those roles have already been profoundly altered by social, legislative, and adjudicative changes. All these changes were adopted toward the end of eliminating the gender-role impositions that previously inhered in the legal regulation of marriage. In short, the “child-centric”/“adult-centric” distinction is an entirely ephemeral one, at odds with the current realities of marriage as an institution. There is simply no substantial 11 Moreover, if the assertion that same-sex marriages are more “adultcentric” is meant to imply state disapproval of the sexual activity presumed to occur in same-sex marriages, that disapproval could not be a legitimate state purpose. After Lawrence, the right to engage in samesex sexual activity is recognized as a protected liberty interest. See 539 U.S. at 578. 82 LATTA V. OTTER relationship between discouraging an “adult-centric” model of marriage and excluding same-sex couples.