Same-sex marriages are now legal across the entirety of the United States after a historic supreme court ruling that declared attempts by conservative states to ban them unconstitutional.
In what may prove the most important civil rights case in a generation, five of the nine court justices determined that the right to marriage equality was enshrined under the equal protection clause of the 14th amendment.
Victory in the case – known as Obergefell v Hodges, after an Ohio man who sued the state to get his name listed on his late husband’s death certificate – caps years of campaigning by LGBT rights activists, high-powered attorneys and couples waiting decades for the justices to rule.
The ruling, in which justice Anthony Kennedy cast the deciding vote, means the number of states where gay marriage is legal will rise from 37 states to all 50.
Four liberal justices and Kennedy rejected claims made by lawyers during the unusually long two and a half hours of legal argument in April that marriage was defined by law solely to encourage procreation within stable family units – and therefore could only meaningfully apply to men and women.
“The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,” wrote Kennedy in his opinion for the majority.
“The petitioners in these cases seek to find that liberty by marrying someone of the same sex and having their marriages deemed lawful on the same terms and conditions as marriages between persons of the opposite sex,” he added.
Crucially, the majority ruling argues that the court has frequently exercised jurisdiction over the definition of marriage in previous cases and is not over-stepping its constitutional role by intervening now.
“This Court’s cases have expressed constitutional principles of broader reach. In defining the right to marry these cases have identified essential attributes of that right based in history, tradition, and other constitutional liberties inherent in this intimate bond,” wrote Kennedy.
Campaigners were jubilant at the news, which was greeted by euphoric scenes on the steps of the court.
“Today marks the culmination of a decades-long campaign in the court of public opinion and in the courts of law,” said Evan Wolfson founder of Freedom to Marry. “And while more remains to be done on many fronts, we can celebrate knowing that fairness and love (and much hard work) have won the day.”
In a nod to an argument colourfully expressed by justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during the oral hearing of the case, the ruling also rejects the notion that the state definition of marriage rests on the ability of couples to procreate.
“That is not to say the right to marry is less meaningful for those who do not or cannot have children,” writes Kennedy, after pointing out the advantages for children of same-sex couples. “An ability, desire, or promise to procreate is not and has not been a prerequisite for a valid marriage in any State.”
The nation’s highest tribunal last weighed marriage equality in 2012, with challenges to California’s effective ban on same-sex marriages, known as Proposition 8, and a key provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.
The justices then ruled in favour of marriage equality proponents, but ducked the question of whether gay marriage was a constitutional right.
The rulings nonetheless kicked off a wave of decisions among courts across the country that struck down state-level bans on same-sex marriage and accelerated a trend that has seen the number of states allowing such weddings soar from just two in 2008, to all 50 in 2015 – plus the District of Columbia, from where a national celebration was only beginning on Friday morning.
