News

Supreme Court Says Yes to Equal Rights

Legislature ordered to extend marital rights, benefits, and obligations to same-gender couples.

The plantiffs of Baker vs Vermont, Back Row: Nina Beck (holding Seth), Stacey Jolles, Peter Harrigan, Stan Baker. Front Row: Holly Puterbaugh and Lois Farnham. Photo: Max Stroud

MONTPELIER – All of the rights and benefits of marriage must flow to gay and lesbian couples in Vermont.

In eloquent and forceful words, the Vermont Supreme Court overturned decades of discrimination on Dec. 20 and ordered the state Legislature to fix state law.

The court did not grant all that was sought by Lois Farnham and Holly Puterbaugh, Stan Baker and Peter Harrigan, and Nina Beck and Stacy Jolles.

But it went further than any other in the nation, and now the state legislature must act.

“We hold that the state is constitutionally required to extend to same-sex couples the common benefits and protections that flow from marriage under Vermont law,” the justices said in a ruling written by Chief Justice Jeffrey Amestoy. “Whether this ultimately takes the form of inclusion within the marriage laws themselves or a parallel ‘domestic partnership’ system or some equivalent statutory alternative, rests with the Legislature.

“Whatever system is chosen, however, must conform with the constitutional imperative to afford all Vermonters the common benefit, protection, and security of the law,” the court said.

All five justices agreed on the central point that the state may no longer withhold the benefits of marriage from gays and lesbians.

But it was only Justice Denise Johnson who took issue with sending the issue to the Legislature. In a passionate dissent from the majority, she said same-sex couples should be allowed to marry immediately.

She complained in her separate opinion that the court recognizes that gays and lesbians are entitled to certain rights and “yet declines to give them any relief other than an exhortation to the Legislature to deal with the problem.”

But that in and of itself is a landmark. No court has ever held that the hundreds of legal benefits automatically conferred on straight couples when they marry must be granted to gays and lesbians.

Until now.

Amestoy wrote that extension of benefits to acknowledge gays and lesbians “as Vermonters who seek nothing more, nor less, than legal protection and security for their avowed commitment to an intimate and lasting human relationship is simply, when all is said and done, a recognition of our common humanity.”

With those plain but clear words, the five justices of Vermont’s court have changed the world.

“This is a legal and cultural milestone,” said Mary Bonauto, a co-counsel for the three couples who sued the state when they were denied marriage licenses in 1997.

“This is a glorious day,” said Evan Wolfson of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, a gay-rights advocacy group. “Vermont’s highest court has ordered an end to unequal treatment of lesbian and gay families.”

Already people are trying to understand just what it all means. For the immediate future, it means nothing other than that the Legislature must address the issue.

But the court spelled out some of the benefits that now must be extended to gays and lesbians in whatever statutory scheme that lawmakers devise.

Those include being able to have a say in a partner’s medical decisions, or having access to life or medical insurance. It means the state must provide the same tax breaks to gay and lesbian couples as it does to married men and women. Inheritance laws will have to change. There are at least 300 places scattered throughout state statutes where marriage in and of itself confers some kind of legal rights.

Elected leaders are trying to figure out their options and all of them, from the governor down, seem to have latched on to the court’s suggestion that domestic partnership might be legal.

“The Legislature will pass a domestic partnership bill and I’m comfortable with that,” Gov. Howard Dean said.

What was more interesting was what he was not comfortable with.

“It makes me uncomfortable, the same as anybody else,” Dean said of gay marriage. “The 4,000-year-old tradition of heterosexual marriage being an institution is something I think you have to respect. I think there are a lot of people in this state who are uncomfortable about the concept of gay marriage.”

There are thousands more who are not uncomfortable and at least some legislative leaders said they would be willing to consider enacting a marriage statute.

“I think the court has broken all barriers by clearly ruling that we have a class of individuals in Vermont who are being denied their rights and I think it is the Legislature’s responsibility to correct that injustice,” said Peter Shumlin, the Senate president pro tempore.

“My own view is that realistically it’s going to be much easier to pass a rights-and-benefits law than it is a marriage law, but I wouldn’t rule either out.”

For the time being, though, the three couples and the three lawyers who have been at the center of the storm are thrilled with the court’s ruling.

“Sunday, in church, the minister said that he wished and prayed that each of us would have a Christmas filled with joy and love, and now mine will be,” Puterbaugh said.