Marriage-equality supporters suffered a blow in the Garden State this week when the New Jersey Supreme Court declined to hear a case filed by same-sex couples seeking the right to marry.
The court released the split decision Monday, with three justices consenting to take the case and three opposed. Four justices must consent for a case to proceed, and the seventh seat is currently vacant.
The justices wrote that, instead of heading to the state Supreme Court, the case should instead be heard by the lower courts because it “cannot be decided without the development of an appropriate trial-like record,” which leaves the door open to the case eventually making its way back to the highest court.
Justice Virginia Long wrote the dissenting opinion for the court, saying the oral arguments that could have been delivered before the Supreme Court would have made up for the lack of a trial record.
The case was filed earlier this year by six same-sex couples who served as the original plaintiffs in Lewis v. Harris, the landmark New Jersey Supreme Court case that found that same-sex couples are entitled to the same rights and benefits as heterosexual married couples and paved the way for the state’s civil-union law.
The couples asked the court to revisit its decision in the original case, considering the reported failures in the civil-union law that have prevented some same-sex couples from receiving equal treatment, which are enumerated in a 2008 report by the Civil Union Review Commission. The commission cited numerous cases of same-sex couples who were denied benefits by employers, hospitals and other entities that didn’t understand the meaning of civil unions, and recommended that full-marriage equality would remedy those issues.
Hayley Gorenberg, deputy director of Lambda Legal, which is representing the plaintiffs, said her agency is “terribly disappointed” in the ruling.
“Our plaintiffs and the New Jersey legislature’s own Civil Union Review Commission documented the rampant discrimination same-sex couples face as a consequence of civil-union status, and this ruling now relegates our plaintiffs to second-class citizenship for even longer,” she said.
Gorenberg said Lambda Legal is currently assessing “possible next steps in Superior Court.”
The New Jersey legislature defeated a marriage-equality bill in January, and Republican Gov. Chris Christie has said he is opposed to such efforts.
The three justices who voted not to take the case — Chief Justice Stuart Rabner and Justices Roberto Rivera-Soto and Helen Hoens — are all up for renomination by the governor and reconfirmation by the Senate. The three who would have accepted the case have already received lifetime tenure.
Former Chief Justice John Wallace was denied lifetime tenure earlier this year by Christie, the first time such an action had been taken by a governor in the state for more than 60 years.
New Jersey Sen. Ray Lesniak, the prime sponsor of the marriage-equality bill, told NJ.com that he wasn’t sure if Christie’s decision to deny Wallace tenure influenced the justices, but acknowledged the possibility.
“There’s speculation about that, and the integrity of the judiciary has been put in question by what Christie did.”
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].