Washington’s Same-Sex Marriage Ban Upheld
The decision, a concurrence, and three dissents are available online in plain text and pdf formats. I haven’t had a chance to do anything except check what the decision was.
Addendum: From the opinion, we can see the problem with “rational” under the law not necessarily having to actually be “rational” as an everyday human being would define it.
Thus, the State is required to demonstrate only a rational basis to justify the legislation. Under this highly deferential standard, any conceivable state of facts providing a rational basis for the classification may be considered. The legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples furthers the State’s legitimate interests in procreation and the well-being of children.
And then there’s the following, from one of the three dissents.
If the DOMA is really about the “sanctity” of marriage, as its title implies, then it is clearly an unconstitutional foray into state-sanctioned religious belief. If the DOMA purports to further some State purpose of preserving the family unit, as the plurality would interpret it, then I cannot imagine better candidates to fulfill that purpose than the same-sex couples who are the plaintiffs in these consolidated actions.
Which would qualify as “rational” as an everyday human being would recognize it, rather than the perverted version the law apparently utilizes.
Addendum: From that same dissent, by Bridge:
Yet while I wholeheartedly agree with Justice Fairhurst’s conclusions that it is the status of marriage itself that is a fundamental right, that the choice of one’s spouse implicates fundamental liberty interests, and that the DOMA does not even satisfy rational basis review, I write separately, in this significant issue of our time, to set forth additional grounds for holding the DOMA unconstitutional.
Bridge then proceeds, at great length and in great detail, to slam the court for abrogating its “duty under the tripartite system of government to provide prompt relief for violations of individual civil rights.”