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

Heading: Same-Sex Marriage Bars Are Based in Gender

Text: Stereotypes Idaho and Nevada’s same sex marriage laws not only classify on the basis of sex but also, implicitly and explicitly, draw on “archaic and stereotypic notions” about the purportedly distinctive roles and abilities of men and women. Eradicating the legal impact of such stereotypes has been a central concern of constitutional sex-discrimination jurisprudence for the last several decades. See, e.g., Mississippi Univ. for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718, 725 (1982). The same-sex marriage bans thus share a key characteristic with many other sex-based classifications, one that underlay the Court’s adoption of intermediate scrutiny for such classifications. The Supreme Court has consistently emphasized that “gender-based classifications . . . may be reflective of ‘archaic and overbroad’ generalizations about gender, or LATTA V. OTTER 63 based on ‘outdated misconceptions concerning the role of females in the home rather than in the marketplace and world of ideas.’” J.E.B., 511 U.S. at 135 (quoting Schlesinger v. Ballard, 419 U.S. 498, 506–07 (1975); Craig, 429 U.S. at 198–99) (some internal quotation marks omitted). Laws that rest on nothing more than “the ‘baggage of sexual stereotypes,’ that presume[] the father has the ‘primary responsibility to provide a home and its essentials,’ while the mother is the ‘center of home and family life’” have been declared constitutionally invalid time after time. Califano v. Westcott, 443 U.S. 76, 89 (1979) (quoting Orr v. Orr, 440 U.S. 268, 283 (1979); Stanton v. Stanton, 421 U.S. 7, 10 (1975); Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522 (1975)). Moreover, “gender classifications that rest on impermissible stereotypes violate the Equal Protection Clause, even when some statistical support can be conjured up for the generalization.” J.E.B., 511 U.S. at 139 n. 11. And hostility toward nonconformance with gender stereotypes also constitutes impermissible gender discrimination. See generally Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins, 490 U.S. 228 (1989); accord Nichols v. Azteca Rest. Enters., Inc., 256 F.3d 864, 874 (9th Cir. 2001) (harassment against a person for “failure to conform to [sex] stereotypes” is gender-based discrimination) (internal quotation marks omitted). The notion underlying the Supreme Court’s anti- stereotyping doctrine in both Fourteenth Amendment and Title VII cases is simple, but compelling: “[n]obody should be forced into a predetermined role on account of sex,” or punished for failing to conform to prescriptive expectations of what behavior is appropriate for one’s gender. See Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Gender and the Constitution, 44 U. Cin. L. Rev. 1, 1 (1975). In other words, laws that give effect to “pervasive sex-role stereotype[s]” about the behavior 64 LATTA V. OTTER appropriate for men and women are damaging because they restrict individual choices by punishing those men and women who do not fit the stereotyped mold. Nev. Dep’t of Human Resources v. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721, 731, 738 (2003). Idaho and Nevada’s same-sex marriage prohibitions, as the justifications advanced for those prohibitions in this Court demonstrate, patently draw on “archaic and stereotypic notions” about gender. Hogan, 458 U.S. at 725. These prohibitions, the defendants have emphatically argued, communicate the state’s view of what is both “normal” and preferable with regard to the romantic preferences, relationship roles, and parenting capacities of men and women. By doing so, the laws enforce the state’s view that men and women “naturally” behave differently from one another in marriage and as parents. The defendants, for example, assert that “gender diversity or complementarity among parents . . . provides important benefits” to children, because “mothers and fathers tend on average to parent differently and thus make unique contributions to the child’s overall development.” The defendants similarly assert that “[t]he man-woman meaning at the core of the marriage institution, reinforced by the law, has always recognized, valorized, and made normative the roles of ‘mother’ and ‘father’ and their uniting, complementary roles in raising their offspring.” Viewed through the prism of the Supreme Court’s contemporary anti-stereotyping sex discrimination doctrine, these proferred justifications simply underscore that the same-sex marriage prohibitions discriminate on the basis of sex, not only in their form—which, as I have said, is sufficient in itself—but also in reviving the very infirmities LATTA V. OTTER 65 that led the Supreme Court to adopt an intermediate scrutiny standard for sex classifications in the first place. I so conclude for two, somewhat independent, reasons. A. First, and more obviously, the gender stereotyping at the core of the same-sex marriage prohibitions clarifies that those laws affect men and women in basically the same way as, not in a fundamentally different manner from, a wide range of laws and policies that have been viewed consistently as discrimination based on sex. As has been repeated again and again, legislating on the basis of such stereotypes limits, and is meant to limit, the choices men and women make about the trajectory of their own lives, choices about work, parenting, dress, driving—and yes, marriage. This focus in modern sex discrimination law on the preservation of the ability freely to make individual life choices regardless of one’s sex confirms that sex discrimination operates at, and must be justified at, the level of individuals, not at the broad class level of all men and women. Because the same-sex marriage prohibitions restrict individuals’ choices on the basis of sex, they discriminate based on sex for purposes of constitutional analysis precisely to the same degree as other statutes that infringe on such choices—whether by distributing benefits or by restricting behavior—on that same ground. B. Second, the long line of cases since 1971 invalidating various laws and policies that categorized by sex have been part of a transformation that has altered the very institution at the heart of this case, marriage. Reviewing that transformation, including the role played by constitutional sex discrimination challenges in bringing it about, reveals that the same sex marriage prohibitions seek to preserve an outmoded, sex-role-based vision of the marriage institution, 66 LATTA V. OTTER and in that sense as well raise the very concerns that gave rise to the contemporary constitutional approach to sex discrimination. (i) Historically, marriage was a profoundly unequal institution, one that imposed distinctly different rights and obligations on men and women. The law of coverture, for example, deemed the “the husband and wife . . . one person,” such that “the very being or legal existence of the woman [was] suspended . . . or at least [was] incorporated and consolidated into that of the husband” during the marriage. 1 William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 441 (3d rev. ed. 1884). Under the principles of coverture, “a married woman [was] incapable, without her husband’s consent, of making contracts . . . binding on her or him.” Bradwell v. Illinois, 83 U.S. 130, 141 (1872) (Bradley, J., concurring). She could not sue or be sued without her husband’s consent. See, e.g., Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation 11–12 (2000). Married women also could not serve as the legal guardians of their children. Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U.S. 677, 685 (1973) (plurality op.). Marriage laws further dictated economically disparate roles for husband and wife. In many respects, the marital contract was primarily understood as an economic arrangement between spouses, whether or not the couple had or would have children. “Coverture expressed the legal essence of marriage as reciprocal: a husband was bound to support his wife, and in exchange she gave over her property and labor.” Cott, Public Vows, at 54. That is why “married women traditionally were denied the legal capacity to hold or convey property . . . .” Frontiero, 411 U.S. at 685. Notably, husbands owed their wives support even if there were no LATTA V. OTTER 67 children of the marriage. See, e.g., Hendrik Hartog, Man and Wife in America: A History 156 (2000). There was also a significant disparity between the rights of husbands and wives with regard to physical intimacy. At common law, “a woman was the sexual property of her husband; that is, she had a duty to have intercourse with him.” John D’Emilio & Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America 79 (3d ed. 2012). Quite literally, a wife was legally “the possession of her husband, . . . [her] husband’s property.” Hartog, Man and Wife in America, at 137. Accordingly, a husband could sue his wife’s lover in tort for “entic[ing]” her or “alienat[ing]” her affections and thereby interfering with his property rights in her body and her labor. Id. A husband’s possessory interest in his wife was undoubtedly also driven by the fact that, historically, marriage was the only legal site for licit sex; sex outside of marriage was almost universally criminalized. See, e.g., Ariela R. Dubler, Immoral Purposes: Marriage and the Genus of Illicit Sex, 115 Yale L.J. 756, 763–64 (2006). Notably, although sex was strongly presumed to be an essential part of marriage, the ability to procreate was generally not. See, e.g., Chester Vernier, American Family Laws: A Comparative Study of the Family Law of the FortyEight American States, Alaska, the District of Columbia, and Hawaii (to Jan. 1, 1931) (1931) I § 50, 239–46 (at time of survey, grounds for annulment typically included impotency, as well as incapacity due to minority or “non-age”; lack of understanding and insanity; force or duress; fraud; disease; and incest; but not inability to conceive); II § 68, at 38–39 (1932) (at time of survey, grounds for divorce included “impotence”; vast majority of states “generally held that impotence . . . does not mean sterility but must be of such a 68 LATTA V. OTTER nature as to render complete sexual intercourse practically impossible”; and only Pennsylvania “ma[d]e sterility a cause” for divorce). The common law also dictated that it was legally impossible for a man to rape his wife. Men could not be prosecuted for spousal rape. A husband’s “incapacity” to rape his wife was justified by the theory that “‘the marriage constitute[d] a blanket consent to sexual intimacy which the woman [could] revoke only by dissolving the marital relationship.’” See, e.g., Jill Elaine Hasday, Contest and Consent: A Legal History of Marital Rape, 88 Calif. L. Rev 1373, 1376 n. 9 (2000) (quoting Model Penal Code and Commentaries, § 213.1 cmt. 8(c), at 342 (Official Draft and Revised Comments 1980)). Concomitantly, dissolving the marital partnership via divorce was exceedingly difficult. Through the mid-twentieth century, divorce could be obtained only on a limited set of grounds, if at all. At the beginning of our nation’s history, several states did not permit full divorce except under the narrowest of circumstances; separation alone was the remedy, even if a woman could show “cruelty endangering life or limb.” Peter W. Bardaglio, Reconstrucing the Household: Families, Sex, and the Law in the Nineteenth-Century South 33 (1995); see also id. 32–33. In part, this policy dovetailed with the grim fact that, at English common law, and in several states through the beginning of the nineteenth century, “a husband’s prerogative to chastise his wife”—that is, to beat her short of permanent injury—was recognized as his marital right. Reva B. Siegel, “The Rule of Love”: Wife Beating as Prerogative and Privacy, 105 Yale L.J. 2117, 2125 (1996). LATTA V. OTTER 69 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the profoundly unequal status of men and women in marriage was frequently cited as justification for denying women equal rights in other arenas, including the workplace. “[S]tate courts made clear that the basis, and validity, of such laws lay in stereotypical beliefs about the appropriate roles of men and women.” Hibbs v. Dep’t of Human Res., 273 F.3d 844, 864 (9th Cir. 2001), aff’d sub nom. Nevada Dep’t of Human Res. v. Hibbs, 538 U.S. 721. Justice Bradley infamously opined in 1887 that “the civil law, as well as nature herself, has always recognized a wide difference in the respective spheres and destinies of man and woman.” Bradwell, 83 U.S. at 141 (Bradley, J., concurring). On this view, women could be excluded from various professions because “[t]he natural and proper timidity and delicacy which belongs to the female sex evidently unfits it for many of the occupations of civil life.” Id. Instead, the law gave effect to the belief that “[t]he paramount destiny and mission of woman are to fulfil the noble and benign offices of wife and mother.” Id. As a result of this separate-spheres regime, “‘[h]istorically, denial or curtailment of women’s employment opportunities has been traceable directly to the pervasive presumption that women are mothers first, and workers second.’ . . . Stereotypes about women’s domestic roles [we]re reinforced by parallel stereotypes presuming a lack of domestic responsibilities for men.” Hibbs, 538 U.S. at 736 (quoting the Joint Hearing before the Subcommittee on Labor–Management Relations and the Subcommittee on Labor Standards of the House Committee on Education and Labor, 99th Cong., 2d Sess., at 100 (1986)). Likewise, social benefits programs historically distinguished between men and women on the assumption, grounded in the unequal marital status of men and women, that women were more likely to be 70 LATTA V. OTTER homemakers, supported by their working husbands. See, e.g., Califano v. Goldfarb, 430 U.S. 199, 205–07 (1977); Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S. 636, 644–45 (1975). (ii) This asymmetrical regime began to unravel slowly in the nineteenth century, starting with the advent of Married Women’s Property Acts, which allowed women to possess property in their own right for the first time. See, e.g., Reva B. Siegel, The Modernization of Marital Status Law: Adjudicating Wives’ Rights to Earnings, 1860–1930, 82 Geo. L. Rev. 2127(1994). Eventually, state legislatures revised their laws. Today, of course, a married woman may enter contracts, sue and be sued without her husband’s participation, and own and convey property. The advent of “no fault” divorce regimes in the late 1960s and early 1970s made marital dissolutions more common, and legislatures also directed family courts to impose child and spousal support obligations on divorcing couples without regard to gender. See Cott, Public Vows, at 205–06. As these legislative reforms were taking hold, “in 1971 . . . the Court f[ou]nd for the first time that a state law violated the Equal Protection Clause because it arbitrarily discriminated on the basis of sex.” Hibbs, 273 F.3d at 865 (citing Reed, 404 U.S. 71). This same legal transformation extended into the marital (and nonmarital) bedroom. Spousal rape has been criminalized in all states since 1993. See, e.g., Sarah M. Harless, From the Bedroom to the Courtroom: The Impact of Domestic Violence Law on Marital Rape Victims, 35 Rutgers L.J. 305, 318 (2003). Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965), held that married couples have a fundamental privacy right to use contraceptives, and Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U.S. 438 (1972), later applied equal protection principles to extend LATTA V. OTTER 71 this right to single persons. More recently, Lawrence clarified that licit, consensual sexual behavior is no longer confined to marriage, but is protected when it occurs, in private, between two consenting adults, regardless of their gender. See 539 U.S. at 578. In the child custody context, mothers and fathers today are generally presumed to be equally fit parents. See, e.g., Cott, Public Vows, at 206. Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U.S. 645, 658 (1972), for example, held invalid as an equal protection violation a state law that presumed unmarried fathers, but not unwed mothers, unfit as parents. Later, the Supreme Court expressly “reject[ed] . . . the claim that . . . [there is] any universal difference between maternal and paternal relations at every phase of a child’s development.” Caban v. Mohammed, 441 U.S. 380, 389 (1979). Likewise, both spouses in a marriage are now entitled to economic support without regard to gender. See Cott, at 206–07. Once again, equal protection adjudication contributed to this change: Orr, 440 U.S. at 278–79, struck down a state statutory scheme imposing alimony obligations on husbands but not wives. In short, a combination of constitutional sex- discrimination adjudication, legislative changes, and social and cultural transformation has, in a sense, already rendered contemporary marriage “genderless,” to use the phrase favored by the defendants. See Op. Ct. at 25 n. 6. For, as a result of these transformative social, legislative, and doctrinal developments, “[g]ender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals.” Perry, 704 F. Supp. 2d at 993. As a result, in the states that currently ban same-sex marriage, the legal norms that currently govern the institution of marriage are “genderless” in every resepect except the requirement that would-be 72 LATTA V. OTTER spouses be of different genders. With that exception, Idaho and Nevada’s marriage regimes have jettisoned the rigid roles marriage as an institution once prescribed for men and women. In sum, “the sex-based classification contained in the[se] marriage laws,” as the only gender classification that persists in some states’ marriage statutes, is, at best, “a vestige of sex-role stereotyping” that long plagued marital regimes before the modern era, see Baker, 744 A.2d at 906 (Johnson, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part), and, at worst, an attempt to reintroduce gender roles. The same-sex marriage bars constitute gender discrimination both facially and when recognized, in their historical context, both as resting on sex stereotyping and as a vestige of the sex-based legal rules once imbedded in the institution of marriage. They must be subject to intermediate scrutiny.