Decision in The U.S. Supreme Court
Baker and McConnell appealed the Minnesota court's decision to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, they claimed the Minnesota marriage statutes implicated three rights: they abridged their fundamental right to marry under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; discriminated based on gender, contrary to the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; and deprived them of privacy rights flowing from the Ninth Amendment to the United States Constitution. On October 10, 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a one-sentence order stating "The appeal is dismissed for want of a substantial federal question."
In most cases presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court's refusal to hear the case is not an endorsement of the decision below. However, since this case came to the Court through mandatory appellate review, the summary dismissal is a decision on the merits of the case. As binding precedent, the Baker decision prevents lower courts from coming to a contrary conclusion when presented with the precise issue the Court necessarily adjudicated in dismissing the case.
Read more about this topic: Baker V. Nelson
Famous quotes containing the words decision in, decision, supreme and/or court:
“Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“There are many things children accept as “grown-up things” over when they have no control and for which they have no responsibility—for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents’ decision to live apart.”
—Fred Rogers (20th century)
“It was the supreme expression of the mediocrity of the apparatus that Stalin himself rose to his position.”
—Leon Trotsky (1879–1940)
“Fortunately for those who pay their court through such foibles, a fond mother, though, in pursuit of praise for her children, the most rapacious of human beings, is likewise the most credulous; her demands are exorbitant; but she will swallow any thing.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)