The Obergefell v. Hodges case is the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, ruling 5-4 that the Fourteenth Amendment requires every state to license marriages between two people of the same sex and to recognize such marriages lawfully performed in other states. The lead plaintiff, Jim Obergefell, sued Ohio because the state would not list him as the surviving spouse on the death certificate of his husband, John Arthur, who was dying of ALS. What began as a fight over one document became the constitutional ruling that reshaped marriage law across the country.
How the Case Started
Jim Obergefell and John Arthur had been together more than twenty years in Cincinnati when John was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis in 2011. The disease was progressive and terminal. Ohio would not let them marry: a 2004 constitutional amendment limited marriage to one man and one woman, and the Ohio Revised Code voided any same-sex marriage entered into in another state.1Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Constitution Article XV Section 11 – Marriage2Ohio Legislative Service Commission. Ohio Code 3101.01 – Persons Who May Be Joined in Marriage
The couple’s specific worry was the death certificate. When John died, Ohio would either leave the surviving spouse field blank or list him as unmarried. That document controls inheritance, survivor benefits, and the basic legal fact that a marriage existed. Erasing it was not acceptable to them.
The Marriage in Maryland
Maryland had begun issuing same-sex marriage licenses on January 1, 2013, after voters approved the Civil Marriage Protection Act.3Social Security Administration. PR 02712.023 Maryland – Section: PR 13-037 Maryland Legislation Legalizing Same-Sex Marriages4Maryland General Assembly. Maryland Code – Civil Marriage Protection Act Residency was not required. By mid-2013, John could no longer sit upright for a commercial flight, so the couple chartered a medical transport plane for roughly $13,000 to fly from Cincinnati to Baltimore-Washington International Airport. John’s aunt, Paulette Roberts, had been ordained to perform the ceremony and boarded with them.5United States Government Publishing Office. The Jim Obergefell Story
The plane landed at 10:39 a.m. Jim sat beside John’s stretcher, they exchanged rings, and Roberts pronounced them married. The ceremony took seven and a half minutes. After fifty-six minutes on the ground, the plane was flying back to Ohio, where the state would not recognize what had just happened.
The District Court Order
In July 2013, civil rights attorney Al Gerhardstein filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio. The case was initially captioned Obergefell v. Kasich. The complaint asked the court to declare Ohio’s refusal to recognize a valid out-of-state same-sex marriage unconstitutional and to order that John’s death certificate list him as married with Jim as his surviving spouse.6United States District Court Southern District of Ohio. Obergefell v. Kasich – Order Granting Plaintiffs Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order
Judge Timothy Black granted a temporary restraining order. His reasoning cut to the inconsistency: Ohio recognized out-of-state marriages that would be prohibited within the state, including marriages between first cousins, but singled out same-sex marriages for non-recognition. He found no legitimate government interest supporting that distinction. The court ordered Ohio’s registrar not to accept any death certificate for John Arthur that failed to record him as married and Jim as his surviving spouse.6United States District Court Southern District of Ohio. Obergefell v. Kasich – Order Granting Plaintiffs Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order
John Arthur died on October 22, 2013, three months after the wedding. His death certificate listed Jim Obergefell as his surviving spouse. Judge Black later converted the temporary order into a permanent injunction, holding that Ohio’s refusal to recognize lawful out-of-state same-sex marriages on death certificates violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantees of due process and equal protection.7Justia. Obergefell et al v. Kasich et al, No. 1:2013cv00501 – Document 65 The case caption shifted as state officials changed, becoming Obergefell v. Wymyslo and eventually Obergefell v. Hodges.
The Sixth Circuit Reversal and the Circuit Split
Ohio appealed. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit consolidated the Ohio case with similar challenges from Kentucky, Michigan, and Tennessee. Every other federal appellate court to consider the question had struck down state bans on same-sex marriage. The Sixth Circuit went the other way.
In a 2-1 decision, Judge Jeffrey Sutton wrote that the authority to define marriage belonged to voters and legislatures rather than federal judges. Judge Martha Craig Daughtrey dissented. The split among the circuits was exactly the kind of conflict that pushes the Supreme Court to grant review.8Justia. Obergefell v. Hodges
The Path to the Supreme Court
Two years before the Court took Obergefell, it had decided United States v. Windsor (2013), striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act. That ruling required the federal government to recognize same-sex marriages performed in states where they were legal but left open whether states could ban such marriages themselves.9Justia. United States v. Windsor Dozens of challenges built on Windsor, including Jim Obergefell’s.
The Court agreed to hear four consolidated cases under the caption Obergefell v. Hodges: the Ohio death certificate case, Tanco v. Haslam from Tennessee, DeBoer v. Snyder from Michigan, and Bourke v. Beshear from Kentucky.8Justia. Obergefell v. Hodges Two questions were presented: whether the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to license same-sex marriages, and whether it requires them to recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states.
The constitutional argument turned on the Fourteenth Amendment. Its Due Process Clause prohibits states from depriving any person of liberty without due process of law, and its Equal Protection Clause bars states from denying anyone equal protection under the law.10Constitution Annotated. Fourteenth Amendment – Section: Section 1 Rights The petitioners argued the right to marry is a fundamental liberty that cannot be withheld from same-sex couples without violating both clauses.
The 5-4 Ruling
On June 26, 2015, the Court ruled 5-4 in favor of Obergefell. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Chief Justice Roberts and Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito each wrote dissents.11Oyez. Obergefell v. Hodges
Kennedy’s opinion identified four reasons the right to marry is fundamental under the Constitution:
- The decision to marry is a personal choice rooted in individual autonomy.
- Marriage supports a bond between two people unlike any other in its importance to the individuals involved.
- Marriage safeguards children and families by providing stability and legal recognition.
- Marriage is a keystone of the nation’s social order, tied to countless aspects of law from taxation to inheritance to hospital visitation.
Each principle applied with equal force to same-sex couples. The Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment requires every state to license marriages between two people of the same sex and to recognize such marriages when lawfully performed elsewhere.11Oyez. Obergefell v. Hodges The opinion specifically listed birth and death certificates among the rights and benefits that states could no longer deny to same-sex couples.8Justia. Obergefell v. Hodges
What the Decision Changed in Practice
The ruling reached well past marriage licenses. The IRS, which had already begun recognizing same-sex marriages after Windsor, required legally married same-sex couples to file federal returns as married filing jointly or married filing separately regardless of state of residence, with all the deductions, credits, and exemptions tied to marital status.12Internal Revenue Service. Same-Sex Marriages Now Recognized for Federal Tax Purposes The Social Security Administration began processing survivor benefit claims for same-sex spouses and invited couples previously denied benefits to reapply.13Social Security Administration. What Same-Sex Couples Need to Know Estate planning changed with the unlimited marital deduction, which exempts assets left to a surviving spouse from federal estate tax regardless of value.
Two years later, in Pavan v. Smith (2017), the Court reinforced the ruling’s breadth. Arkansas had refused to list a birth mother’s wife on a child’s birth certificate while automatically listing a birth mother’s husband regardless of biological parentage. The Court held that states cannot deny same-sex couples access to birth certificates on the same terms as opposite-sex couples, describing birth certificates as part of the “constellation of benefits” placed beyond a state’s power to withhold.14Justia. Pavan v. Smith
The Respect for Marriage Act
Supreme Court rulings can be overturned by later Courts. After Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) that the Court should reconsider other substantive due process precedents, Congress passed a statutory backstop. The Respect for Marriage Act, signed into law on December 13, 2022, repealed the remnants of the Defense of Marriage Act and wrote marriage recognition into federal law.
The Act does two things. For any federal law where marital status matters, a person is considered married if the marriage is between two individuals and was valid where performed. And any person acting under state authority is barred from denying full faith and credit to an out-of-state marriage based on the sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin of the spouses. Individuals harmed by a violation can sue in federal court, and the Attorney General can bring enforcement actions.15Congress.gov. H.R. 8404 – Respect for Marriage Act
One boundary is worth naming. The Act does not require any state to perform same-sex marriages if Obergefell were overturned. It guarantees that marriages already performed would remain recognized by every state and the federal government. For couples who married in one state because their home state refused to allow it, that interstate recognition provision is the core protection.