U.S. State Constitutional Amendments Banning Same-sex Unions - Litigation

Litigation

Nebraska is one of the states that added an amendment to its constitution to reinforce existing statutes defining marriage as only between one man and one woman. The amendment passed by a vote of 70 to 30 percent in 2000 as Nebraska Initiative Measure 416. In May 2005, in Citizens for Equal Protection v. Bruning, Judge Joseph F. Bataillon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Nebraska held that the state constitutional amendment violates the United States Constitution. In July 2006, the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed his ruling, reinstated the measure, and holding that "laws limiting the state-recognized institution of marriage to heterosexual couples ... do not violate the Constitution of the United States."

In Ohio, a suit was filed seeking to prevent a state university from according its employees domestic partner benefits. The suit was dismissed on the grounds that the plaintiff lacked standing.

In Tennessee, groups sought to keep the amendment from reaching the ballot. On April 21, 2005, a lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, the Tennessee Equality Project, and other plaintiffs, claiming that the proposed amendment had not been published in a timely manner between legislative sessions as the state constitution required; specifically, the suit alleged that the newspaper publication of the proposed amendment had occurred only four months prior to the legislative election in November 2004 rather than the required six. This suit was dismissed at the appellate court level in March 2006 on the grounds that the legislature's intent to put the amendment before voters in November 2006 was widely reported in the media, meeting this requirement in spirit if not in letter. This decision was in turn appealed to the Tennessee Supreme Court, which rejected the ACLU's case in July 2006 due to lack of standing; this decision cleared the way for the amendment to appear on the November ballot. The amendment passed.

In 2010 the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the state's marriage amendment was proper and did not violate the state constitution's "single subject" rule. In 2009 the Court refused in Appling v. Doyle to strike down the state's domestic partnership registry, enacted that year, directing the case to the circuit court.Wisconsin Supreme Court Rejects Case Seeking to Strip Away Domestic Partnership Protections (press release), Fair Wisconsin, Nov. 4, 2009. Current Governor Scott Walker asked in May 2011 to withdraw the state's defense of the domestic partnership registry. On June 20, 2011, Dane County Judge Dan Moeser ruled that the registry does not violate the state constitution, finding that the state "does not recognize domestic partnership in a way that even remotely resembles how the state recognizes marriage".