Florida Federal District Judge Declares State's Same-Sex Marriage Ban Unconstitutional

Professor Ruthann Robson, City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law

In his 33 page  opinion  today in Brenner v. Scott, Judge Robert Hinkle of the Northern District of Florida found that Florida's same-sex marriage bans in the constitution as Article I §27 and Florida Statutes § 741.04(1) violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

Judge Hinkle first determined that the "right asserted by the plaintiffs is a fundamental right as that term is used in due-process and equal-protection jurisprudence," noting that almost every court that has addressed the issue since the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Windsor has said the answer is yes, and concluded that that "view is correct."  Given that there is a fundamental right, he continued:

That leaves for analysis the second step, the application of strict scrutiny. A state may override a fundamental right through measures that are narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest. A variety of justifications for banning same- sex marriages have been proffered by these defendants and in the many other cases that have plowed this ground since Windsor. The proffered justifications have all been uniformly found insufficient. Indeed, the states’ asserted interests would fail even intermediate scrutiny, and many courts have said they would fail rational- basis review as well. On these issues the circuit decisions in Bostic, Bishop, and Kitchen are particularly persuasive. All that has been said there is not repeated here.

Judge Hinkle did take the opportunity, however, to specifically discuss the procreation argument, finding that "Florida has never conditioned marriage on the desire or capacity to procreate."

Like other judges, Judge Hinkle used Justice Scalia's dissenting language from Lawrence v. Texas to note that moral disapproval in the marriage context is the same as moral disapproval in the sodomy context. 

Judge Hinkle's opinion then analyzed the requirements for a preliminary injunction, finding them satisfied. But he also held that a stay was warranted; it would have been difficult to rule otherwise in light of the previous stays, including the one just yesterday by the United States Supreme Court.