Opinion ID: 2743619
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Same-Sex Marriage Prohibitions Facially

Text: Classify on the Basis of Gender “[S]tatutory classifications that distinguish between males and females are ‘subject to scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause.’” Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 197 (1976) (quoting Reed v. Reed, 404 U.S. 71, 75 (1971)). “To withstand constitutional challenge, . . . classifications by gender must serve important governmental objectives and must be substantially related to achievement of those objectives.” Id. “The burden of justification” the state shoulders under this intermediate level of scrutiny is “demanding”: the state must convince the reviewing court that the law’s “proffered justification” for the gender classification “is ‘exceedingly persuasive.’” United States v. Virginia, 518 U.S. 515, 533 (1996) (“VMI”). Idaho and Nevada’s same-sex marriage bans discriminate on the basis of sex and so are invalid unless they meet this “demanding” standard. A. Idaho and Nevada’s same-sex marriage prohibitions facially classify on the basis of sex.1 Only women may marry men, and only men may marry women.2 Susan Latta may not 1 “Sex” and “gender” are not necessarily coextensive concepts; the meanings of these terms and the difference between them are highly contested. See, e.g., Katherine Franke, The Central Mistake of Sex Discrimination Law: The Disaggregation of Sex from Gender, 144 U. Pa. L. Rev 1 (1995). For present purposes, I will use the terms “sex” and “gender” interchangeably, to denote the social and legal categorization of people into the generally recognized classes of “men” and “women.” 2 Idaho Const. art. III § 38 (“A marriage between a man and a woman is the only domestic legal union that shall be valid or recognized in this state.”); Idaho Code § 32-201(1) (“Marriage is a personal relation arising 52 LATTA V. OTTER marry her partner Traci Ehlers for the sole reason that Latta is a woman; Latta could marry Ehlers if Latta were a man. Theodore Small may not marry his partner Antioco Carillo for the sole reason that Small is a man; Small could marry Carillo if Small were a woman. But for their gender, plaintiffs would be able to marry the partners of their choice. Their rights under the states’ bans on same-sex marriage are wholly determined by their sex. A law that facially dictates that a man may do X while a woman may not, or vice versa, constitutes, without more, a gender classification. “[T]he absence of a malevolent motive does not convert a facially discriminatory policy into a neutral policy with a discriminatory effect. Whether [a policy] involves disparate treatment through explicit facial discrimination does not depend on why the [defendant] discriminates but rather on the explicit terms of the discrimination.” UAW v. Johnson Controls, Inc., 499 U.S. 187, 199 (1991).3 Thus, plaintiffs challenging policies that out of a civil contract between a man and a woman . . . .”); Nev. Const. art. I, § 21 (“Only a marriage between a male and female person shall be recognized and given effect in this state.”); Nev. Rev. Stat. § 122.020 (“[A] male and a female person . . . may be joined in marriage.”). 3 UAW v. Johnson Controls was a case brought under Title VII of the Civil Rights act of 1964, which, inter alia, bans employment policies that discriminate on the basis of sex. Title VII provides it is an unlawful employment practice for an employer—(1) to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; (2) to limit, segregate, or classify his employees LATTA V. OTTER 53 facially discriminate on the basis of sex need not separately show either “intent” or “purpose” to discriminate. Personnel Adm’r of Massachusetts v. Feeney, 442 U.S. 256, 277–78 (1979). Some examples help to illuminate these fundamental precepts. Surely, a law providing that women may enter into business contracts only with other women would classify on the basis of gender. And that would be so whether or not men were similarly restricted to entering into business relationships only with other men. . . . in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(a). The Supreme Court has “analog[ized]” to its decisions interpreting what constitutes discrimination “because of” a protected status under Title VII in analyzing Fourteenth Amendment equal protection claims and vice versa. See, e.g., Gen. Elec. Co. v. Gilbert, 429 U.S. 125, 133 (1976), superseded by statute on other grounds as recognized in Johnson Controls, 499 U.S. at 219 (“While there is no necessary inference that Congress . . . intended to incorporate into Title VII the concepts of discrimination which have evolved from court decisions construing the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the similarities between the congressional language and some of those decisions surely indicate that the latter are a useful starting point in interpreting the former.”). As the Court has explained, “[p]articularly in the case of defining the term ‘discrimination,’” Title VII must be interpreted consistently with Fourteenth Amendment equal protection principles, because Congress does not define “discrimination” in Title VII. See Gilbert, 429 U.S. at 133; see also 42 U.S.C. § 2000e. I therefore rely on Title VII cases throughout this Opinion for the limited purpose of determining whether a particular classification is or is not sexbased. 54 LATTA V. OTTER Likewise, a prison regulation that requires correctional officers be the same sex as the inmates in a prison “explicitly discriminates . . . on the basis of . . . sex.” Dothard v. Rawlinson, 433 U.S. 321, 332, 332 n. 16 (1977). Again, that is so whether women alone are affected or whether men are similarly limited to serving only male prisoners.4 Further, it can make no difference to the existence of a sex-based classification whether the challenged law imposes gender homogeneity, as in the business partner example or Dothard, or gender heterogeneity. Either way, the classification is one that limits the affected individuals’ opportunities based on their sex, as compared to the sex of the other people involved in the arrangement or transaction. As Justice Johnson of the Vermont Supreme Court noted, the same-sex marriage prohibitions, if anything, classify more obviously on the basis of sex than they do on the basis of sexual orientation: “A woman is denied the right to marry another woman because her would-be partner is a woman, not because one or both are lesbians. . . . [S]exual orientation 4 Dothard in fact dealt with a regulation that applied equally to men and women. See 433 U.S. at 332 n. 16 (“By its terms [the regulation at issue] applies to contact positions in both male and female institutions.”); see also id. at 325 n. 6. Dothard ultimately upheld the sex-based discrimination at issue under Title VII’s “bona fide occupational qualification” exception, 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-2(e), because of the especially violent, sexually charged nature of the particular prisons involved in that case, and because the regulation applied only to correctional officers in “contact positions” (i.e. working in close physical proximity to inmates) in maximum security institutions. See Dothard, 433 U.S. at 336–37 (internal quotation marks omitted). For present purposes, the salient holding is that the same-sex restriction was overtly a sex-based classification, even if it could be justified by a sufficiently strong BFOQ showing. Id. at 332–33. LATTA V. OTTER 55 does not appear as a qualification for marriage” under these laws; sex does. Baker v. State, 744 A.2d 864, 905 (Vt. 1999) (Johnson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). The statutes’ gender focus is also borne out by the experience of one of the Nevada plaintiff couples: When Karen Goody and Karen Vibe went to the Washoe County Marriage Bureau to obtain a marriage license, the security officer asked, “Do you have a man with you?” When Karen Vibe said they did not, and explained that she wished to marry Karen Goody, she was told she could not even obtain or complete a marriage license application . . . [because] “[t]wo women can’t apply” . . . [and] marriage is “between a man and a woman.” Notably, Goody and Vibe were not asked about their sexual orientation; Vibe was told she was being excluded because of her gender and the gender of her partner. Of course, the reason Vibe wants to marry Goody, one presumes, is due in part to their sexual orientations.5 But that does not mean the classification at issue is not sex-based. 5 The need for such a presumption, as to a factor that does not appear on the face of the same-sex marriage bans, suggests that the gender discrimination analysis is, if anything, a closer fit to the problem before us than the sexual orientation rubric. While the same-sex marriage prohibitions obviously operate to the disadvantage of the people likely to wish to marry someone of the same gender—i.e. lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and otherwise-identified persons with same-sex attraction—the individuals’ actual orientation is irrelevant to the application of the laws. 56 LATTA V. OTTER Dothard also involved a facial sex classification intertwined with presumptions about sexual orientation, in that instance heterosexuality. The Supreme Court in Dothard agreed that the state was justified in permitting only male officers to guard male inmates, because there was “a real risk that other inmates, deprived of a normal heterosexual environment, would assault women guards because they were women.” 433 U.S. at 335. Thus, Dothard’s reasoning confirms the obvious: a statute that imposes a sex qualification, whether for a marriage license or a job application, is sex discrimination, pure and simple, even where assumptions about sexual orientation are also at play. Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) also underscores why the continuation of the same-sex marriage prohibitions today is quite obviously about gender. Lawrence held that it violates due process for states to criminalize consensual, noncommercial same-sex sexual activity that occurs in private between two unrelated adults. See id. at 578. After Lawrence, then, the continuation of the same-sex marriage bans necessarily turns on the gender identity of the spouses, not the sexual activity they may engage in. To attempt to bar that activity would be unconstitutional. See id. The Nevada intervenors recognize as much, noting that Lawrence “differentiates between the fundamental right of gay men and lesbians to enter an intimate relationship, on one hand, and, on the other hand, the right to marry a member of one’s own sex.” The “right to marry a member of one’s own sex” expressly turns on sex. B. In concluding that these laws facially classify on the basis of gender, it is of no moment that the prohibitions “treat men as a class and women as a class equally” and in that LATTA V. OTTER 57 sense give preference to neither gender, as the defendants6 fervently maintain. That argument revives the longdiscredited reasoning of Pace v. Alabama, which upheld an anti-miscegenation statute on the ground that “[t]he punishment of each offending person, whether white or black, is the same.” 106 U.S. 583, 585 (1883), overruled by McLaughlin v. Florida, 379 U.S. 184 (1964). Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896), overruled by Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954), similarly upheld racial segregation on the reasoning that segregation laws applied equally to black and white citizens. This narrow view of the reach of the impermissible classification concept is, of course, no longer the law after Brown. Loving v. Virginia reinforced the post-Brown understanding of impermissible classification under the Fourteenth Amendment in a context directly analogous to the present one. Addressing the constitutionality of antimiscegenation laws banning interracial marriage, Loving firmly “reject[ed] the notion that the mere ‘equal application’ of a statute containing racial classifications is enough to remove the classifications from the Fourteenth Amendment’s proscription of all invidious racial discrimination.” 388 U.S. 1, 8 (1967). As Loving explained, “an even-handed state purpose” can still be “repugnant to the Fourteenth Amendment,” id. at 11 n. 11, because restricting individuals’ rights, choices, or opportunities “solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause” even if members of all racial groups are 6 Following the style of the Opinion of the Court, see Op. Ct. at 22 n. 4, I will refer throughout this Opinion to arguments advanced generally by “defendants,” meaning the parties that continue actively to argue in defense of the laws, i.e. the Idaho defendants and the Nevada intervenors. 58 LATTA V. OTTER identically restricted with regard to interracial marriage. Id. at 12. “Judicial inquiry under the Equal Protection Clause . . . does not end with a showing of equal application among the members of the class defined by the legislation.” McLaughlin, 379 U.S. 184 at 191. If more is needed to confirm that the defendants’ “equal application” theory has no force, there is more—cases decided both before and after Loving. Shelley v. Kraemer, for example, rejected the argument that racially restrictive covenants were constitutional because they would be enforced equally against both black and white buyers. Shelley v. Kraemer 334 U.S. 1, 21–22 (1948). In so holding, Shelley explained: “The rights created by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment are, by its terms, guaranteed to the individual. The rights established are personal rights.” Id. at 22. Shelley also observed that “a city ordinance which denied to colored persons the right to occupy houses in blocks in which the greater number of houses were occupied by white persons, and imposed similar restrictions on white persons with respect to blocks in which the greater number of houses were occupied by colored persons” violated the Fourteenth Amendment despite its equal application to both black and white occupants. See id. at 11 (describing Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U.S. 60 (1917)). The same individual rights analysis applies in the context of gender classifications. Holding unconstitutional peremptory strikes on the basis of gender, J.E.B. explained that “individual jurors themselves have a right to nondiscriminatory jury selection procedures . . . . [T]his right extends to both men and women.” J.E.B. v. Alabama ex rel. T.B., 511 U.S. 127, 140–41 (1994). “The neutral phrasing of the Equal Protection Clause, extending its guarantee to ‘any LATTA V. OTTER 59 person,’ reveals its concern with rights of individuals, not groups (though group disabilities are sometimes the mechanism by which the State violates the individual right in question).” Id. at 152 (Kennedy, J., concurring). City of Los Angeles, Dep’t of Water & Power v. Manhart further explains why, even in “the absence of a discriminatory effect on women as a class” or on men as a class, the samesex marriage bars constitute gender classifications, because they “discriminate against individual[s] . . . because of their sex.” 435 U.S. 702, 716 (1978) (emphasis added). In that case, the parties recognized that women, as a class, lived longer than men. Id. at 707–09. The defendant Department argued that this fact justified a policy that facially required all women to contribute larger monthly sums to their retirement plans than men, out of fairness to men as a class, who otherwise would subsidize women as a class. Id. at 708–09. Manhart rejected this justification for the sex distinction, explaining that the relevant focus must be “on fairness to individuals rather than fairness to classes,” and held, accordingly, that the policy was unquestionably sex discriminatory. Id. at 709, 711. Under all these precedents, it is simply irrelevant that the same-sex marriage prohibitions privilege neither gender as a whole or on average. Laws that strip individuals of their rights or restrict personal choices or opportunities solely on the basis of the individuals’ gender are sex discriminatory and must be subjected to intermediate scrutiny. See J.E.B., 511 U.S. at 140–42. Accordingly, I would hold that Idaho and Nevada’s same-sex marriage prohibitions facially classify on the basis of gender, and that the “equal 60 LATTA V. OTTER application” of these laws to men and women as a class does not remove them from intermediate scrutiny.7 C. The same-sex marriage prohibitions also constitute sex discrimination for the alternative reason that they impermissibly prescribe different treatment for similarly situated subgroups of men and women. That is, the same-sex marriage laws treat the subgroup of men who wish to marry men less favorably than the otherwise similarly situated subgroup of women who want to marry men. And the laws treat the subgroup of women who want to marry women less 7 Several courts have so held. See Golinski v. U.S. Office of Pers. Mgmt., 824 F. Supp. 2d 968, 982 n. 4 (N.D. Cal. 2012) (“Ms. Golinski is prohibited from marrying Ms. Cunninghis, a woman, because Ms. Golinski is a woman. If Ms. Golinski were a man, DOMA would not serve to withhold benefits from her. Thus, DOMA operates to restrict Ms. Golinski’s access to federal benefits because of her sex.”), initial hearing en banc denied, 680 F.3d 1104 (9th Cir. 2012) and appeal dismissed, 724 F.3d 1048 (9th Cir. 2013) ; In re Levenson, 560 F.3d 1145, 1147 (9th Cir. EDR 2009) (Reinhardt, J., presiding) (“If [Levenson’s husband] were female, or if Levenson himself were female, Levenson would be able to add [his husband] as a beneficiary. Thus, the denial of benefits at issue here was sex-based and can be understood as a violation of the . . . prohibition of sex discrimination.”); Perry v. Schwarzenegger, 704 F. Supp. 2d 921, 996 (N.D. Cal. 2010) (“Perry is prohibited from marrying Stier, a woman, because Perry is a woman. If Perry were a man, Proposition 8 would not prohibit the marriage. Thus, Proposition 8 operates to restrict Perry’s choice of marital partner because of her sex.”), aff’d sub nom. Perry v. Brown, 671 F.3d 1052 (9th Cir. 2012), vacated and remanded sub nom. Hollingsworth v. Perry, 133 S. Ct. 2652 (2013); Baehr v. Lewin, 852 P.2d 44, 59 (Haw. 1993) (plurality op.) (a same-sex marriage bar, “on its face, discriminates based on sex”); Baker, 744 A.2d at 905 (Johnson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (a same-sex marriage bar presents “a straightforward case of sex discrimination” because it “establish[es] a classification based on sex”). LATTA V. OTTER 61 favorably than the subgroup of otherwise identically situated men who want to marry women. The Supreme Court has confirmed that such differential treatment of similarly-situated sex-defined subgroups also constitutes impermissible sex discrimination. Phillips v. Martin Marietta Corp., for example, held that an employer’s refusal to hire women with preschool-age children, while employing men with children the same age, was facial sex discrimination, even though all men, and all women without preschool-age children, were treated identically. See 400 U.S. 542, 543–44 (1971) (per curiam). And the Seventh Circuit held an airline’s policy requiring female flight attendants, but not male flight attendants, to be unmarried was discrimination based on sex, relying on Phillips and explaining that a classification that affects only some members of one gender is still sex discrimination if similarly situated members of the other gender are not treated the same way. “The effect of the statute is not to be diluted because discrimination adversely affects only a portion of the protected class.” Sprogis v. United Air Lines, Inc., 444 F.2d 1194, 1198 (7th Cir. 1971). Of those individuals who seek to obtain the state-created benefits and obligations of legal marriage to a woman, men may do so but women may not. Thus, at the subclass level—the level that takes into account the similar situations of affected individuals—women as a group and men as a group are treated differently. For this reason as well I would hold that Idaho and Nevada’s same-sex marriage prohibitions facially classify on the basis of gender. They must be reviewed under intermediate scrutiny. 62 LATTA V. OTTER D. One further point bears mention. The defendants note that the Supreme Court summarily rejected an equal protection challenge to a same-sex marriage bar in Baker v. Nelson, 409 U.S. 810 (1972), holding there was no substantial federal question presented in that case. But the Court did not clarify that sex-based classifications receive intermediate scrutiny until 1976. See Craig, 429 U.S. at 221, 218 (Rehnquist, J., dissenting) (describing the level of review prescribed by the majority as “new,” and as “an elevated or ‘intermediate’ level scrutiny”). As this fundamental doctrinal change postdates Baker, Baker is no longer binding as to the sex discrimination analysis, just as it is no longer binding as to the sexual orientation discrimination analysis. See Op. Ct. at 22–24.