Iowa Supreme Court unanimously upholds same-sex marriage

Thinkprogress:

In an unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court upheld the right of same-sex couples to marry. The court, which was reviewing a district court decision allowing six gay couples to marry, found that “limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution”:

In a unanimous decision, the Iowa Supreme Court today held that the Iowa statute limiting civil marriage to a union between a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution.

The decision strikes the language from Iowa Code section 595.2 limiting civil marriage to a man and a woman. It further directs that the remaining statutory language be interpreted and applied in a manner allowing gay and lesbian people full access to the institution of civil marriage.

The ruling “makes Iowa the first Midwestern state, and the fourth nationwide, to allow same-sex marriages.” In the opinion, the judges compared protecting the right to same-sex marriage to past rulings by the Iowa Supreme Court that protected women’s rights and struck down slavery and segregation laws:

So, today, this court again faces an important issue that hinges on our definition of equal protection. This issue comes to us with the same importance as our landmark cases of the past. The same-sex-marriage debate waged in this case is part of a strong national dialogue centered on a fundamental, deep-seated, traditional institution that has excluded, by state action, a particular class of Iowans. This class of people asks a simple and direct question: How can a state premised on the constitutional principle of equal protection justify exclusion of a class of Iowans from civil marriage?