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Tomorrow is the 11-year wedding anniversary for more than 300 same-sex couples who were married in Michigan following a landmark court decision. A federal judge in Detroit had ruled the day before, on March 20th, 2014, that the state’s same-sex marriage ban violated the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause.
That decision sent hundreds of couples dashing to clergy and courthouses to get married while they could.
Admission is free, but space is limited, so advance registration is needed. You can attend in person or watch it online.
It also set Michigan’s same-sex marriage controversy on a path to the U.S. Supreme Court before it issued its historic same-sex marriage decision.
The case started out as an adoption rights challenge filed by a gay couple that wanted to jointly adopt the special-needs kids they were raising together. Michigan law at the time only allowed one unmarried person to qualify as an adoptive parent.
It was U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedman, a President Ronald Reagan appointee, who suggested the bottom-line issue was actually not about adoption but, rather, Michigan’s same-sex marriage ban. He invited April DeBoer and Jayne Rowse to expand their challenge. Their legal team in the case included future Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel. Their chief adversary was then-Attorney General Bill Schuette, who billed himself as a “one-man one-woman traditional marriage-protecting attorney general.”
At the time, recent history appeared to be with Schuette. Democratic President Bill Clinton set the “don’t-ask-don't-tell” policy in 1994 covering gay military service members. It was an awkward compromise that LGBT service members would not be discharged for being gay as long as they kept quiet about it. That was the political climate that existed in 1996 as the Michigan Legislature adopted and then-Governor John Engler signed a statutory ban on same-sex marriage. Less than a decade later, in 2004, Michigan voters amended the Michigan Constitution to ban gay marriage. That ban is still on the books.
So, Judge Friedman’s decision to strike down the marriage ban was a significant development and his refusal to issue a stay was seismic because it allowed same-sex couples to get married right away.
Clerks in Ingham, Washtenaw, Oakland and Muskegon counties opened their offices on a Saturday morning to issue licenses and perform ceremonies.
The first documented wedding took place at 8:05 a.m. at the Ingham County Courthouse in Mason (Rick was there and remembers it well). The weddings continued even as Bill Schuette went immediately to the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, seeking a stay. The appeals court granted the request later that day and the ceremonies stopped.
That presented a new twist on the status of the already-officiated marriages and the rights that go along with being a married couple.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the federal government would recognize those first same-sex marriages, while then-Michigan Governor Rick Snyder tried to thread the needle, saying the marriages were legal but nevertheless not recognized by the state.
That led to a second case to have those marriages fully recognized by the state. That is, a case less about the right to get married, but the right to stay married.
“The couples married on March 22 are caught in a paradox,” said Marsha Caspar, who, with her partner Glenna DeJong, were the first same-sex couple to marry in Michigan. “We’re married and we’re not.”
A little more than a year later, in the summer of 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court settled the matter when it held in Obergefell v. Hodges that same-sex marriage was legal across the land.
A decade later, attitudes about same-sex marriage have shifted, says pollster Richard Czuba of the Glengariff Group.
“The country was being told that if you allow same-sex marriage, marriage will collapse in this country,” Czuba told Rick. “Ten years on, I don’t think anyone can credibly make the case that that has happened as a result of same-sex marriage.”
But just weeks ago, Republican state Representative Josh Schriver and a handful of other GOP lawmakers sponsored a non-binding resolution calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse Obergefell.
“This decision has defaced the definition of marriage, undermined our God-given rights, increased persecution of Christians and confused the American family structure,” said Schriver.
The House Republican leadership dismissed the Schriver resolution as an unwelcome distraction and assigned it to a graveyard committee to languish.
But LGBTQ rights activists say they are nevertheless concerned because the dormant language of the same-sex marriage ban remains in the Michigan Constitution as well as in statute.
Earlier this month, a number of Democrats at the state Capitol introduced their own proposal to protect same-sex marriage rights in Michigan. It would require amending the state constitution.
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who was one of the lawyers to challenge the same-sex marriage ban, told Zoe this week on the It’s Just Politics podcast that she would like to see it formally repealed by voters. “I think it has to be. And the reason I say that is because I think the Obergefell decision is in real jeopardy,” said Nessel.
She said resolutions like Schriver’s are being sponsored in legislatures across the country and are designed to invite new legal challenges to same-sex marriage rights.
“We know a resolution can’t overturn a Supreme Court decision,” said Nessel, “but there can be other cases that are litigated that wind up later being argued before the United States Supreme Court, and I really believe they have a majority on that court that would overturn that decision.”
Nessel said a Supreme Court majority displayed a willingness in 2022 to topple what appears to be settled law when it reversed long-standing abortion rights protections. She noted the Obergefell decision was decided by a slim 5-to-4 majority.
But a ballot campaign in 2026 to amend the constitution would be a big organizational lift and cost millions of dollars. The question for a lot of Democratic and progressive groups is whether that is an effort they want to launch during a busy mid-term with a slew of big offices at stake.
Digging deeper: The legal matter of same-sex marriage spent years and years in courts leading all the way up to the Supreme Court ten years ago. So, what was it like to cover the landmark decision? We were reminded this week of Rick’s interview with the Columbia Journalism Review about what it was like to have an upfront seat to history as he covered the cases. “If the national coverage is focused on the court, and the interactions between justices and attorneys, I can do the human-focused storytelling. What is it like for April and Jayne to be there in Washington? What happens back home when all this is over?”You can check out the full interview here.
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Have questions about Michigan politics? Or, just want to let us know what you want more of (less of?) in the newsletter? We always want to hear from you! Shoot us an email at politics@michiganpublic.org!
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What we’re talking about at the dinner table
9 bills update: The slow-rolling constitutional impasse between the state Senate and the House continues. Democratic Senate Majority Leader Winnie Brinks has filed a motion with a Michigan Court of Claims judge seeking enforcement of a ruling that nine bills adopted last year should go to Governor Gretchen Whitmer for her to sign or veto. The deadline for the bills to be presented in time for them to be enacted was Wednesday. Judge Sima Patel did not issue a compliance order in hopes of averting a constitutional fight over the judiciary telling the legislative branch how to conduct its business. But there is no sign that Republican House Speaker Matt Hall will budge. “Enough is enough,” said Brinks in a statement. “How much longer are we going to pretend that it’s normal or okay for a speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives to ignore the constitution and disregard a judge’s orders?” The Brinks filing suggests, as an alternative, the House could return the bills to the Senate to send to the governor. Hall responded he finds that idea absurd. The next stop would be the Michigan Court of Appeals and, ultimately, the Michigan Supreme Court.
Nessel fights back: As we’ve discussed in previous weeks in the newsletter, progressives are angry that the fight-like-hell version of Governor Gretchen Whitmer has taken on a more pragmatic approach to working with President Donald Trump in his second term. So, what do other statewide elected Dems think? In a wide-ranging interview with Attorney General Dana Nessel this week, Zoe asked Nessel for her thoughts on this conciliatory path. “I think that those Democrats will look back on this very difficult and concerning time in American history and have deep regrets that they didn't do more to fight back when they still had the opportunity to do so,” said Nessel. Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, Nessel has filed or joined six lawsuits against the federal government. The AG has also filed amicus briefs in twelve other cases. “This will certainly not be the last of our lawsuits, unfortunately, if the federal government continues to flagrantly violate the law, the Constitution, and many norms that just have been part of the federal government for decades, if not centuries,” Nessel said. When asked about whether the AG is eyeing the open U.S. Senate seat in Michigan next year: “It's really hard for me to focus on anything in 2026 when I see the state of the country in such disarray now in 2025.”
Failed vote: It’s rare to see a Speaker of the House put up legislation that they know will fail but that’s exactly what Matt Hall did this week in Lansing when the state House voted down legislation that would allow undocumented immigrants to apply for Michigan driver’s licenses. “The bill failed in the House 39-64 vote, but served the political function of putting Democrats on record on where they stood on the policy after a 2024 election cycle in which Republicans focused their political messaging on illegal immigration concerns,” The Detroit News’ Beth LeBlanc astutely explains. “The vote has been long sought by advocates, who have argued the prohibition on licenses for undocumented immigrants has pushed them to drive illegally and unsafely if they want to get to and from work, school or daily living activities. The Drive SAFE package has been circulating for close to a decade in the Michigan Legislature without a chamber vote on the matter.” It’s, again, just one more indication of Hall’s ability to use the speaker’s power and wedge issues to box in House Democrats.
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Yours in political nerdiness,
Rick Pluta & Zoe Clark
Co-hosts, It’s Just Politics
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