Rights groups sue Hawaii for recognition of same-sex civil unions

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Rights groups sue Hawaii for recognition of same-sex civil unions

July 30, 2010 08:50:56 am

[JURIST] Lambda Legal and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [complaint, PDF] Thursday seeking to force Hawaii to recognize same-sex civil unions [JURIST news archive] that offer the same rights as marriage. The complaint, filed on behalf of six same-sex couples, was in response to the veto of legislation [JURIST report] earlier this month by Hawaii Governor Linda Lingle (R) [official website] that would have created same-sex civil unions. The lawsuit, filed in the First Circuit Court of Hawaii [official website], argues that, by failing to provide same-sex couples with the same rights and benefits available to opposite-sex couples, the state is violating the same-sex couples’ right to equal protection, due process and privacy under the Hawaii Constitution [text]. The plaintiffs allege that, by providing only reciprocal beneficiary status, a legal relationship offering limited benefits to same-sex couples, the state is impermissibly denying same-sex couples’ right to equal protection by giving their relationship “inferior legal status” and providing an “insufficient and defective safety net for their families.” Additionally, the complaint argues that the lack of equal status interferes with the plaintiffs’ rights to private family life and would survive no level of scrutiny because it reflects “moral disapproval and antipathy toward lesbians and gay men serv[ing] no legitimate government interest.” Explaining the harm caused by these constitutional violations, the complaint argues:

The State’s relegation of same-sex couples to the inadequate status of reciprocal beneficiaries subjects the Plaintiff couples to legal vulnerability and related stress, while depriving them of the dignity and legitimacy of a legal status that, while still unequal to marriage, would at least recognize their equal entitlement to the same rights, benefits and obligations as are provided to different-sex couples who marry. The State’s family relationship scheme … sends a clear and purposeful message that the State views lesbian and gay people as secondclass citizens who are undeserving of the legal sanction, protections and support that heterosexual people and their families enjoy.

The lawsuit stops short of seeking recognition of same-sex marriage, noting that the state legislature [official website] has the constitutional authority to define marriage under a 1998 amendment passed following a 1993 Hawaii Supreme Court decision [text] requiring the state to show a compelling reason to deny same-sex marriage.

The ACLU first indicated it would be filing the lawsuit [press release] earlier this month shortly after Lingle’s veto. Last week, the ACLU filed a lawsuit seeking to force Montana [JURIST report] to provide legal status to same-sex relationships. The lawsuit seeks declaratory judgment that the state must provide a legal status to same-sex couples that confers the same rights and obligations as marriage under the equal protection, due process, privacy and dignity under provisions of the Montana Constitution [text]. Several jurisdictions in the US have legalized same-sex marriage or recognized same-sex civil unions. Same-sex civil unions that confer the same rights as marriage are currently recognized in Washington, New Jersey, Oregon and Nevada [JURIST reports]. In March, DC legalized same-sex marriage, joining Vermont, New Hampshire, Iowa, Connecticut and Massachusetts [JURIST reports].

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail

On April 16, 1963, an incarcerated Martin Luther King, Jr. (arrested for demonstrating in defiance of a court order) wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail in response to a published statement by eight fellow clergymen from Alabama.

Part of the letter read: We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God-given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we stiff creep at horse-and-buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging dark of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate-filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five-year-old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross-county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness" then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience. Read the full text of the Letter.