Love Wins by Debbie Cenziper

Love Wins by Debbie Cenziper

Author:Debbie Cenziper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-04-29T04:00:00+00:00


14

TWENTY-ONE YEARS FROM MIDNIGHT

AL LOVED to sue people. It was the surest way to make the law work for the weak, the most satisfying kind of advocacy. On the best days, he could find legal doctrine to combat the misfortunes of his clients, and the worst days weren’t particularly awful because lawsuits often brought attention to problems with no legal fix. Losing in court could set bad precedent, but early in his career, Al had decided to use the law with purpose, no matter the outcome, as long as the case moved to solve a significant problem.

His lawsuit against Ohio had produced some early wins, but as he scrambled to prepare for the December hearing, Al braced for uncertainty. If he won in Judge Black’s trial court, the state would likely take the fight to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, where three of more than twenty judges would be randomly selected to decide the case. Al knew that even sympathetic judges could find him on the right side of fairness but the wrong side of law, and ultimately rule against him.

A few months earlier, Al had heard from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in New York, where lawyers worried that a fresh loss in the Sixth Circuit would set damaging precedent. Promising freedom-to-marry cases were advancing in Virginia, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina, and appeals from those states would be heard by federal courts considered more liberal than the Sixth Circuit. A marriage case from Nevada was already before a federal appeals court considered the most progressive in the country. The ACLU wanted good case law and feared that a defeat in the Sixth Circuit before rulings in those other states could set back the marriage movement.

Al was torn. He wanted to support national strategy, which he knew was highly coordinated and backed by all of the country’s major gay rights groups. In 2005, a year after voters in Ohio and other states had banned same-sex marriage, leaders of the marriage movement gathered in a hotel in New Jersey and penned a call to action for an eventual victory at the U.S. Supreme Court. They would choose battlegrounds carefully, build strong legislative campaigns, and try to dramatically change the way people viewed gay couples and their families. Then, only with a critical mass of states and strong public support, they would bring a case to the Supreme Court. A nonprofit called Freedom to Marry, led by lawyer Evan Wolfson, who had helped win the first same-sex marriage victory in Hawaii, would devote resources to state organization and public education.

In just a handful of years, the campaign had made enormous progress through bills in state legislatures, ballot-measure victories, and lawsuits led by Lambda Legal, the ACLU, the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, and others. By the end of 2013, eighteen states plus the District of Columbia would allow same-sex couples to marry.

But Ohio, assigned to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, was considered among the most difficult to turn.

Al



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