Today the California Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage in a 4-3 ruling. The court’s ruling stated that “the legal issue we must resolve is not whether it would be constitutionally permissible under the California Constitution for the state to limit marriage only to opposite-sex couples while denying same-sex couples any opportunity to enter into an official relationship with all or virtually all of the same substantive attributes.” Instead, the question the Court answered was whether the failure to designate the official relationship of same-sex couples as marriage instead of the state recognized domestic partnership violates the California Constitution. The Court found that it did.
The decision and its dissents is 172 pages, so there is a lot to digest. I will post more after I have been able to read through it in full. In the meantime, to read the opinion yourself, you can find it here. There are also posts through the blogosphere today on the issue, including here at Steven Ballard’s Massachusetts Divorce & Family Law Blog, here at Family Law Prof Blog, and here at Jeffrey Lalloway’s California Divorce and Family Law Blog.