Maplewood Mayor Vic De Luca
and South Orange Village President Alex Torpey are among 18 New Jersey
Mayors who have signed onto an amici curiae brief urging the U.S.
Supreme Court to rule in favor of the freedom
to marry nationwide for all people. More than 200 Mayors across the
nation have signed the amici curiae brief.
The case, DeBoer v. Snyder
is an appeal of the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court, which held that gay and
lesbian citizens, unlike other citizens, have no fundamental right to
marry. The Court said marriage should
be left to the “state democratic processes” and “in the hands of the
state voters.”
Summary of the Brief:
Amici ask this Court to
expressly hold that this fundamental right applies equally to same-sex
couples and different-sex couples, it cannot be withheld by popular vote
or the whims of a state legislature,
and states cannot discriminatorily refuse to respect lawful marriages
performed in other states. At least three grounds support this result.
First, excluding a certain
class of citizens from marriage undermines the dignity and respect that
government owes all its citizens. Gay and lesbian couples live in all of
our communities, where
they raise children, support each other in sickness and in health,
combine assets, buy homes and otherwise engage in all the indicia of
marriage. The stability of these family units directly benefits
municipalities. Marriage lessens societal ills such as poverty,
homelessness, and crime; when it is denied to a defined class of
citizens, they – and their children – are more likely to need the social
services that municipalities provide.
Equal treatment under the
law, including the freedom to marry, is also a boon to municipalities’
local economies, which are largely reliant on the recruitment of talent
and diversity in the workforce
and in their population. “[D]iverse, inclusive communities that welcome
gays, immigrants, artists, and free-thinking bohemians are ideal for
nurturing creativity and innovation, both keys to success in the new
technology.” Richard Florida & Gary Gates, The
Brookings Institution, Technology and Tolerance: The Importance of
Diversity to High-Technology Growth (2001). Institutional discrimination
at the state level greatly impedes local governments’ ability to
achieve that goal. Without marriage equality, public
entities face great difficulty attracting the kind of talent that
enriches their local economies, diminishing their competitiveness
vis-à-vis states (or countries) that permit equal access to marriage.
Second, official recognition
of marriage as a fundamental right of all citizens, including gay men
and lesbians, is crucial to municipalities’ ability to treat citizens
with equal dignity and respect.
Long before the current momentum towards ending gay couples’ exclusion
from marriage, numerous cities had already been at the forefront in
enacting local laws and regulations prohibiting discrimination on the
basis of sexual orientation, sometimes long before
the state counterparts. Those cities have seen the benefits of treating
their citizens with equal dignity and respect, a respect that must
extend to their full and equal enjoyment of constitutional rights such
as the freedom to marry.
Finally, marriage equality
cannot have full meaning unless it is recognized uniformly across state
lines. The second question before this Court – whether a state may
constitutionally refuse to recognize
the marriage of a same-sex couple validly married in another state –
should be answered with a resounding “no.”
The right to travel is based
on the premise that our country is strengthened by the freedom that we
all have to move among the various states. It is hard to imagine a
greater obstruction to travel
than a state law declaring that a family will be dissolved upon entry
into another state. Amici, who seek to attract a diverse and vibrant
pool of employees, businesses and residents, have a strong interest in
ensuring that such blatant constitutional violations
of their citizens are not tolerated by this Court.
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