Rights Vindicated in Ohio
By Many people pointed out that Ohio’s gay-bashing constitutional amendment would raise potentially serious constitutional problems because it was so overbroad. In breaking news the Ohio courts have struck down the odious second sentence of the initiative as violating the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The sentence in question reads:
This state and its political subdivisions shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance or effect of marriage.
As the court pointed out, this sentence was in clear conflict with Ohio’s Domestic Violence Act, which created a separate court that were able to issue protection orders against abusive partners even if the partner was not a spouse. The court found–quite correctly–that this discrimination against unmarried couples failed even the “rational basis” equal protection test, and hence violated the Constitution. So get ready for calls of “judicial activism” against the court, and remember that people making these calls apparently believe that a state can fail to provide unmarried people with fundamental legal protections against private violence it provides to married people as part of a campaign of irrational discrimination against an unpopular minority. And then ask yourself what, exactly, the equal protection clause does prohibit if it allows states to do that. It should be noted, as well, that the opinion is narrowly drawn, saying at the outset that “the court finds that this Judgment Entry should not be construed to express any opinion whatsoever regarding the issue of whether same-sex marriages should be legally recognized in the State of
More when I get more info.