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 supreme court, decision in, decision, supreme and/or court:
“Henderson: What about Congress and the Supreme Court and the President? We got to pay them, don’t we?
Grandpa: Not with my money, no sir.”
—Robert Riskin (1897–1955)
“I know my fate. One day my name will be tied to the memory of something monstrous—a crisis without equal on earth, the most profound collision of conscience, a decision invoked against everything that had previously been believed, demanded, sanctified. I am no man, I am dynamite!”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Drug misuse is not a disease, it is a decision, like the decision to step out in front of a moving car. You would call that not a disease but an error of judgment.”
—Philip K. Dick (1928–1982)
“Beauty of whatever kind, in its supreme development, invariably excites the sensitive soul to tears.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)
“In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)