On June 24, 2011, the Legislature passed and the Governor signed into law the Marriage Equality Act, which grants same-sex couples the right to marry in New York State.
On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that all same-sex couples are guaranteed the right to marry, which extended legal marriage recognition to same-sex couples throughout the United States.
The plaintiffs were represented by civil rights lawyer Mary Bonauto and Washington, D.C. lawyer Douglas Hallward-Driemeier. U.S. Solicitor General Donald B. Verrilli Jr., representing the United States, also argued for the same-sex couples.
The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1868, granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States—including former enslaved people—and guaranteed all citizens “equal protection of the laws.” One of three amendments passed during the Reconstruction era to abolish slavery and ...
Jim Obergefell (/ˈoʊbərɡəfɛl/ OH-bər-gə-fel; born 1966) is an American civil rights activist who was the lead plaintiff in the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States.
Hodges, legal case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled (5–4) on June 26, 2015, that state bans on same-sex marriage and on recognizing same-sex marriages duly performed in other jurisdictions are unconstitutional under the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.