Massachusetts's
highest court ruled Thursday that same-sex couples who
live in states with explicit bans on same-sex marriage
cannot come to the Bay State and ask for a marriage
license, The New York Times reports. However,
couples who come from states that are ambiguous on the
matter may still have a claim to those licenses.
In an opinion
written by Justice Francis X. Spina, the court upheld a
1913 statute that says no out-of-state resident can get
married in Massachusetts if the marriage would be void
in the person's home state, unless the person intends
to live in Massachusetts. Five justices concurred, at
least in part, with Justice Spina's opinion; one justice
dissented.
"The laws of this
commonwealth have not endowed nonresidents with an
unfettered right to marry," Justice Spina wrote for the
majority. "To the contrary, the rights of nonresidents
to marry in Massachusetts have been specifically
restricted." Spina added, "I recognize that the brunt"
of the law's impact "has inevitably fallen
disproportionately on nonresident same-sex couples rather
than on nonresident opposite-sex couples" because no
other state currently allows same-sex marriage.
The decision
stems from a lawsuit filed by eight out-of-state couples and
12 cities and towns, claiming the 1913 statute was
discriminatory and had been invalidated by the
legalization of same-sex marriage in the state. In its
decision the court denied the claims of all but the couples
from New York and Rhode Island, because laws in those
states have not specifically outlawed same-sex
marriage. The high court sent those cases back to the
superior court judge who had originally denied them, asking
the judge to determine whether same-sex marriage is allowed
in those states.
Only one justice,
Roderick L. Ireland, dissented, writing that "the
commonwealth's resurrection of a moribund statute to deny
nonresident same-sex couples access to marriage is not
only troubling" but "also is fundamentally unfair."
Chief Justice
Margaret H. Marshall concurred with much of Justice Spina's
opinion but recommended that same-sex couples "who reside in
states where they are not expressly prohibited from
marrying by statute, constitutional amendment, or
controlling appellate court decision be permitted, at
the very least, to present evidence to rebut the
commonwealth's claim that their home state would prohibit
their marriage." (The Advocate)
