1972 October 10

First Supreme Court Case on Same-Sex Marriage – No Substantial Federal Question

 

Tthe U.S. Supreme Court on this day, in Baker v. Nelson, dismissed for lack of a “substantial federal question” a case in which two University of Minnesota students had applied for a marriage license.

On May 18, 1970, the two students, Richard Baker and James Michael McConnell, applied for a marriage license in Minneapolis, setting in motion the first same-sex marriage case to reach the Supreme Court. The two were denied a marriage license, and in October 1971, the Minnesota Supreme Court upheld the denial.

Forty-three years later, in the landmark case of Windsor v. United States, on June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court declared unconstitutional parts of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which forbade federal recognition of same-sex marriages.

On June 26, 2015, in Obergefell v. Hudson, the Supreme Court declared that same-sex marriage was constitutional in the entire United States under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Read about the landmark Supreme Court case: Debbie Cenziper and Jim Obergefell, Love Wins: The Lovers and Lawyers Who Fought the Landmark Case for Marriage Equality  (2016)

Learn more at Freedom to Marry: http://www.freedomtomarry.org/

Read about the history of the GLBT revolution: Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle (2015)

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