Talk:Same-sex marriage in Connecticut/Archive 1

Archive 1

Judicial intervention

I'm struggling with the basis for the last sentence in the lead paragraph:

Connecticut became the fifth state in the United States (following Vermont, Maine, California, and New Jersey) to adopt civil unions or domestic partnership, and the first to do so without judicial intervention.

(emphasis added.)

Obviously Vermont's legislature acted at the direction of the courts.

New Jersey certainly had a case pending at the time it's legislature acted. But, the N.J. courts certainly hadn't directed the legislature to do anything at all. Obviously, today the N.J. Supreme Court mandated an expansion (or replacement) of the existing statutory scheme. I concede that the threat of a ruling like today's casts some doubt on New Jersey's as being without some speculative judicial threat.

California's history is rather convoluted, but it clearly predated Connecticut's enactment. I'm willing to discount California's first few laws creating and expanding the domestic-partner registry, as they were pretty anemic (my own editorial judgment). A.B. 205, signed into law in September 2003 and taking effect on January 1, 2005, however, was sufficiently sweeping that it seems to be of the same class as Connecticut's scheme. To what judicial mandate (or a substantial threat of one) do we attribute the legislature's action in passing A.B. 205?

Or, perhaps, there is some unstated distinction between California's program and Connecticut's? If so, what it is? Certainly there are differences, but I question that they give rise to an entirely different category of legislation.

For that matter, some mention of Hawaii might be in order. That's a somewhat different beast with a substantially different story.

Wonderbreadsf 00:11, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

updates?

I'm a relatively new Wikipedian, so I'm not sure as to the protocols for substantially changing an article.

I bring this up because this article could use some cleaning/updating. Most notably, the CT Supreme Court recently heard oral arguments regarding whether the CT constitution requires that civil unions be called marriages. I'd be happy to make these changes, but didn't know if that's the original author's job.Ronnotronald 15:38, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

CT Supreme court ruled in favor of gay marriage

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27117467/ 72.94.234.145 (talk) 16:32, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Page move?

Is it premature to discuss moving this page to Same-sex marriage in Connecticut? —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 16:50, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Not anymore. Miglewis (talk) 17:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC) [1]

All right then. Proposing the move. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I second, it. Do we really need to discuss this at length? The decision is out! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.181.89.255 (talk) 18:15, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was move. JPG-GR (talk) 05:26, 15 October 2008 (UTC)

Recognition of same-sex unions in Connecticut → Same-sex marriage in Connecticut — Given the decision of the Connecticut Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage in the state, it makes sense to move this page so that its naming conforms with Same-sex marriage in California and Same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. — Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 17:45, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Survey

Feel free to state your position on the renaming proposal by beginning a new line in this section with *'''Support''' or *'''Oppose''', then sign your comment with ~~~~. Since polling is not a substitute for discussion, please explain your reasons, taking into account Wikipedia's naming conventions.

• Support and very strongly. The Court's ruling unambiguously declared that civil unions amounted to discrimination and thus an unconstitutional violation of equal rights; as such, same sex unions have ceased to exist in Connecticut. In its place, the Court ordered marriage. Thus, the current title of the article is inaccurate. It should be renamed to reflect existing law. TechBear (talk) 21:08, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support since marriage was ordered, but leave a redirect from the old article name. There's a rich history behind CT civil unions, and I haven't found any reliable source explaining the status of those who have formed CT civil unions, so it's not clear that CT unions have ceased to exist. --EqualRights (talk) 12:08, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support: It's obviously the clearest thing to do, just like the California and Massachusetts article.--Cooljuno411 (talk) 16:49, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support: Yeah, and there is not enough info on civil unions to justify a separate page, so leaving this page as a redirect seems the most sensible. -Rrius (talk) 03:33, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

Any additional comments:

Has the decision been appealed to the Federal courts? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:28, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think that the Federal courts would have jurisdiction here — the decision was based on the Constitution of Connecticut. —Josiah Rowe (talk • contribs) 18:30, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Josiah is correct here. Had the ruling gone against the plaintiffs, they could have appealed to the federal circuit court on the grounds that existing state law violated their Fourteenth Amendment rights. It would have had a snowball's chance, but it would have been possible. But since the Court ruled for the plaintiffs, and since the case was brought forward under the Connecticut state constitution rather than the US Constitution, and since the ruling came from the state Supreme Court, marriage opponents have no grounds on which to appeal the decision anywhere. It stands as is. TechBear (talk) 21:05, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

One should never underestimate the ingenuity of opposition lawyers. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:00, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Indeed; the MA gay marriage decision was appealed to SCOTUS, which rejected the appeal. In any case, WP is not a crystal ball... --EqualRights (talk) 11:39, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

• Support: It's obviously the clearest thing to do, just like the California and Massachusetts article.--Cooljuno411 (talk) 16:49, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Effective date and scope

As happened with California, we are getting ahead of ourselves. The opinion put out today is not effective yet. According to this source, its direction to the trial court to enter judgment for the plaintiffs (that is to overturn the ban on SSM), takes effect on October 28. The trial court's order will determine when marriage will become available. Currently, the article is written as though couples in Connecticut could go get married today, which is not true.

Also, at some related articles, people are acting as though the civil union law was ruled unconstitutional. It wasn't, the part of it that said marriage is between a man and a woman was. Beyond that, it was the overall statutory scheme that was ruled unconstitutional. That is to say, offering civil union instead of SSM was rejected, not civil unions. Until someone abrogates the Civil Union Act, it should not be treated as though it was repealed. -Rrius (talk) 21:36, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the catch. We are indeed getting ahead of ourselves. TechBear (talk) 21:52, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

Happens all the time, politically charged or not. It would be helpful if the media could get this right, but at least that Reuters article got it. With California, the numbers changed repeatedly, which was pretty funny. -Rrius (talk) 22:23, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

The trial court can't legalize SSM - all it can do is implement the decision with regard to the individual plaintiffs in this particular case. You'll note that the court in the decision cites to the Supreme Court's decision in Lawrence, for example, and not the trial court's decision. Rather, the decision of the court itself serves as the interpretation of the Conn. Constitution and therefore the ban on gay marriages may be considered to be overturned at the time the opinion is made official (judging from the header on the opinion, I assume that's the 28th, though several reliable sources say it was the 10th). --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 03:03, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

(Copied from response to identical post at Template talk:Same-sex unions in the United States) Okay, so let's be even more precise. The Supreme Court said that the current statutory scheme violates the Connecticut Constitution and instructed the trial court to enter summary judgment for the plaintiffs (the couples seeking to obtain marriage licenses). The Supreme Court's instruction to the trial court does not take effect until October 28. Once it receives the instruction (called a mandate) the court will notify the lawyers for each side and set a court date. It may be that the parties and court have set that court date for the 28th already, but there is no reason to think they did. At the court date, the court will likely issue an order granting summary judgment and issuing an injunction directing a town clerk to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples (it is also possible, because the issue went up to the supreme court, that the injunction will be worded to apply to more than just the town clerk(s) at issue). That injunction will then be served on the clerk, and same-sex marriage licenses will then need to be issued. The court could decide to give the government more time to prepare themselves for issuing such licenses. Before the injunction is issued, the clerks cannot issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Marriage licenses are a creature of statute, and clerks' power and duty to issue them is currently exclusively based on the statute. That will only change once a court tells them the statute is unconstitutional and they must do something else. The supreme court opinion does not do that; rather, it left that to the trial court. Thus, both legally and practically, SSM will not be the law in Connecticut until the trial court speaks. -Rrius (talk) 03:36, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

(Copied from response to identical post at Template talk:Same-sex unions in the United States) I have no idea what your point about Lawrence is. I did not say the supreme court relied on anything the trial court had previously done; nor did I say anything other than the supreme court's decision in Kerrigan & Mock serves as the declaration that the ban on SSM is unconstitutional. What I was saying is that the supreme court, instead itself directing the executive to issue marriage licenses, left it for the trial court to do so. I used the word "legalize" to describe this because, to the extent it SSM can be said to be illegal, it is because the legislature says it is illegal for the executive to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Because "legalize" is so imprecise, it is easy to find different sources claiming different points in the process where someone or something "legalized" same-sex marriage. My point was not meant to get into this debate, but rather to get at the point of when same-sex marriage will actually become an institution in Connecticut. That is to say, when same-sex couples will actually be able to marry in Connecticut. -Rrius (talk) 03:51, 21 October 2008 (UTC)