Same-S£x 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 – capped years of campaigning by LGBT rights activists, high-powered attorneys and couples waiting decades for the justices to rule. It immediately led to scenes of jubilation from coast to coast, as campaigners, politicians and everyday people – gay, straight and in-between – hailed “a victory of love”.
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.
“They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law,” Kennedy wrote. “The Constitution grants them that right.”
Speaking from the White House, Barack Obama said the decision would “end the patchwork system we currently have”.
“This ruling is a victory for America,” the president said. “This decision affirms what millions of Americans already believe in their hearts: when all Americans are treated as equal, we are all more free.”
Four liberal justices and Kennedy rejected claims made by lawyers during the 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 S£x and having their marriages deemed lawful on the same terms and conditions as marriages between persons of the opposite S£x,” 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 overstepping 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.
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