Do US states have to give full faith and credit to the same-sex marriage laws of other states?

Answer 1

The "Full faith and credit" clause says that states should respect the laws of neighboring states: if a person is married in one state, they should be treated as married in the neighboring states. This has not yet been tested before the courts.

In fact, this clause has definitely not become the center for public debate on the issue. The Equal Protection Clause has, and several federal courts have struck down statutory and constitutional bans on same-sex marriage in individual states based upon the Equal Protection Clause.

Answer 2

It could be applied to require states to recognize marriages certified by other states, but the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA") purports to supersede this clause and permit states to ignore only one type of marriage: that between two persons of the same sex. Other than that, states must accept each other's drivers licenses, divorce decrees, adoptions, car inspection stickers, etc. The only exception to this is that states are free to pretend that gay people are not married.

Answer 3

The "full faith and credit" clause of the US Constitution has been interpreted several different ways by the Supreme Court. Generally speaking, states are not required to honor laws of other states unless there is a significant Federal justification. For example, states used to be able to determine the legal age for buying alcohol. States can, of course, agree to honor those laws.

Since marriage is regulated by the states, they can refuse to recognize marriages performed in other states. Some states used to refuse to recognize mixed-race marriages that were legally performed in other states. Eventually, the US Supreme Court decided that laws prohibiting people of different races from getting married were unconstitutional.

Answer 4

According to Title 28, Section 1738c of the United States Code:

No State, territory, or possession of the United States, or Indian tribe, shall be required to give effect to any public act, record, or judicial proceeding of any other State, territory, possession, or tribe respecting a relationship between persons of the same sex that is treated as a marriage under the laws of such other State, territory, possession, or tribe, or a right or claim arising from such relationship.

Answer 5

Arguably yes or no. In the United States, states have always been obligated to recognize marriages performed in other states, except where the marriage was "repugnant" or against "public policy." This exception has usually been reserved for incestuous or polygamous marriages. At one time in our nation's history, some states refused to recognized interracial marriages performed in other states.

The pro-same-sex marriage argument is that states have no legitimate reason for refusing to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages and are bound by the Full-Faith-And-Credit-Clause to do so (assuming, arguendo, that the Defense of Marriage Act which permits exactly this is itself unconstitutional).

The anti-same-sex marriage argument is that, relying upon the Defense of Marriage Act, no state can be compelled to recognize a marriage that is considered "repugnant" or against "public policy."

The main difficulty, as I see it, is that there are states that prohibit discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation that somehow also refuse to recognize same-sex marriages because, presumably, they are repugnant, which is quite an insulting word to apply to a protected class of individuals.

In summary, this is an issue to be decided by the United States Supreme Court, not by the users of WikiAnswers.

Answer 6

They are not. They are prevented from doing so by Section 2 of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA") which purports to permit states to refuse to recognize marriages from other states, but only if they are same-sex marriages. Although many courts have ruled Section 3 of DOMA (which bans federal recognition), so far, no court has struck down Section 2 as unconstitutional.