The Supreme Court has declared that same-sex couples have a right to marry anywhere in the United States

The Supreme Court has declared that same-sex couples have a right to marry anywhere in the United States.

Gay and lesbian couples already can marry in 36 states and the District of Columbia. The court's ruling on Friday means the remaining 14 states, in the South and Midwest, will have to stop enforcing their bans on same-sex marriage.

The outcome is the culmination of two decades of Supreme Court litigation over marriage, and gay rights generally.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, just as he did in the court's previous three major gay rights cases dating back to 1996.

read our live blogging on facebook post as the news was coming out also at the bottom read the entire ruling 

Supreme Court Rules on Obergefell v. Hodges 

Holding: Fourteenth Amendment requires a state to license a marriage between two people of the same sex. - 

the Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges will go down as one of the biggest cases in recent memory. There are actually two questions that was before the Court in the four cases, which hail from Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, and Michigan: whether the Constitution allows states to prohibit same-sex marriage; and whether states can refuse to recognize, or give effect to, the marriages of same-sex couples who were married in another state where same-sex marriage is legal.

Read the scrips from our FaceBook Live Blogging below as well as the entire ruling below

We are still scanning the opinion to see whether it announces a standard of scrutiny, but it's clear that the Court's opinion relies on the dual rationales of fundamental rights AND equal protection. We'll update more re: the equal protection reasoning as soon as we finish reading.

The opinion seems to go out of its way not to state a standard of scrutiny. Instead, it says, "It is now clear that the challenged laws burden the liberty of same-sex couples, and it must be further acknowledged that they abridge central precepts of equality . . . Especially against a long history of disapproval of their relationships, this denial to same-sex couples of the right to marry works a grave and continuing harm. The imposition of this disability on gays and lesbians serves to disrespect and subordinate them. And the Equal Protection Clause, like the Due Process Clause, prohibits this unjustified infringement of the fundamental right to marry." That's page 22.

The opinion appears to echo Windsor in its dual rationales: Marriage is a fundamental right in which homosexual couples must share, and it would also be a violation of equal protection to extend that right only to heterosexual couples.

The Chief Justice has the principal dissent, which is 31 pages long. Toward the end of it, he says, "If you are among the many Americans--of whatever sexual orientation--who favor expanding same-sex marriage, by all means celebrate today's decision. Celebrate the achievement of a desired goal. Celebrate the opportunity for a new expression of commitment to a partner. Celebrate the availability of new benefits. But do not Celebrate the Constitution. It had nothing to do with it." From the concluding paragraph of the majority opinion: "No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. ... [The challengers] ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right."

From the majority opinion, addressing the role of history in the constitutional analysis: "The nature of injustice is that we may not always see it in our own times. The generations that wrote and ratified the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did not presume to know the extent of freedom in all of its dimensions, and so they entrusted to future generations a character protecting the right of all persons to enjoy liberty as we learn its meaning."

The Chief Justice is reading his dissent from the bench still. I have a brief summary of it above, but the basic gist is that he thinks that the democratic process should have worked this out on its own. The tone of the Chief's dissent is very measured, and repeatedly urges the victors to celebrate, despite his disagreement with the Court being the one to make the decision

Scalia's dissent has an awesome footnote on page 7 (note 22): he says, "If, even as the price to be paid for a fifth vote, I ever joined an opinion for the Court that began: ‘The Constitution promises liberty to all within its reach, a liberty that includes certain specific rights that allow persons, within a lawful realm, to define and express their identity,’ I would hide my head in a bag. The Supreme Court of the United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of the fortune cookie." He is not happy with Justice Kennedy.

READ THE FULL DECISION CLICK HERE