Baker V. Nelson - Decision in The U.S. Supreme Court

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 the, decision in, decision, supreme and/or court:

    Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.
    Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)

    Concision in style, precision in thought, decision in life.
    Victor Hugo (1802–1885)

    The decision to feed the world
    is the real decision. No revolution
    has chosen it. For that choice requires
    that women shall be free.
    Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)

    The safety of the republic being the supreme law, and Texas having offered us the key to the safety of our country from all foreign intrigues and diplomacy, I say accept the key ... and bolt the door at once.
    Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)

    I know one husband and wife who, whatever the official reasons given to the court for the break up of their marriage, were really divorced because the husband believed that nobody ought to read while he was talking and the wife that nobody ought to talk while she was reading.
    Vera Brittain (1893–1970)