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Monday, March 14, 2016

Puerto Rico Rejects Gay Marriage, SCOTUS Ruling ‘Doesn’t Apply Here’

Because of Puerto Rico’s ambiguous political status vis-à-vis the United States, a federal judge in Puerto Rico ruled Tuesday that the Supreme Court’s decision to impose gay marriage doesn’t apply on the island, which is a commonwealth with a unique constitutional status.

The Commonwealth of Puerto Rico has its own Civil Code, which enshrines traditional man-woman marriage in the recognized definition of the institution. It states that marriage is “a civil institution, originating in a civil contract whereby a man and a woman mutually agree to become husband and wife and to discharge toward each other the duties imposed by law.”

Federal district judge Juan Perez-Gimenez based his ruling on the contention that the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to Puerto Rico, which allowed him to uphold the commonwealth’s ban on same-sex marriage.

In his ten-page opinion, Perez-Gimenez said that the Supreme Court’s decision last June in Obergefell v. Hodges was based on that amendment alone, and a series of century-old Supreme Court rulings put the island outside of that provision.

More here

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Go for them.

Anonymous said...

Somebody's got it right!

Maybe time to move to PR!

Anonymous said...

Excellent!!!

Hopefully President Trump will change that.

Anonymous said...

No president can change a supreme court ruling you idiot.