Sevcik v. Sandoval

Sevcik v. Sandoval
United States District Court for the District of Nevada
Full case name	Beverley Sevcik et al., Plaintiffs, v. Brian Sandoval et al., Defendants.
Date decided	November 26, 2012
Citations	2012 WL 5989662, PACER Docket 2:12-cv-00578-RCJ-PAL
Judge sitting	Hon. Robert C. Jones, U.S.D.J.
Case history
Related actions	Order. Motion to dismiss granted in part (re: equal protection challenge), denied in part (as allowed by Romer v. Evans.)
Case holding
Plaintiff's traditional equal protection challenge is precluded by Baker v. Nelson. Heightened scrutiny is not required in sexual-orientation-based distinctions. The Nevada constitutional amendment and statute at issue fulfill a legitimate state interest, hence surviving rational basis scrutiny.
Keywords
Fourteenth Amendment, Equal protection, Same-sex marriage

Sevcik v. Sandoval (D.Nev 2012) is a federal case challenging the State of Nevada's denial of same-sex marriage as prohibited by Nevada's constitution and statutory law. The complaint was initially filed in the Federal District of Nevada on April 10, 2012, on behalf of several couples denied marriage licenses, challenging this denial on the basis of the U.S. Constitution's Fourteenth Amendment guarantee of equal protection.

On November 26, 2012, Chief Judge Robert C. Jones ruled against the plaintiff same-sex couples, granting in part a motion to dismiss the complaint against the Nevada government officials named in it. The plaintiffs appealed to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on December 3, 2012.

Constitutional amendment

The Constitution of Nevada was amended in 2002 to incorporate Article 1, Section 21, which reads: "Only a marriage between a male and female person shall be recognized and given effect in this state," restricting marriage to different-sex couples. Voters first approved a ballot question endorsing this amendment to that effect on November 7, 2000, with 70% of the vote.^[1] Its principal sponsor was the Coalition to Protect Marriage, a local organization.^[2] Because Nevada requires a constitutional amendment be approved by the voters twice,^[3] Nevada voters considered the same ballot question on November 5, 2002, and approved it by a margin of 67%-33%.^{[1] [4]}

Lawsuit

On April 10, 2012, Lambda Legal, an LGBT rights advocacy organization, filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Nevada on behalf of eight same-sex couples. Four of the couples had been denied marriage licenses by county clerks in Nevada. The other four had married in other jurisdictions (California and Canada) and wanted Nevada to recognize their relationships as marriages. The suit named as defendants Gov. Brian Sandoval and three county clerks. Lambda Attorney Tara Borelli explained the plaintiffs' argument: "[W]e are relying on the Nevada domestic partnership law to help illustrate how irrational the unequal treatment of same-sex couples is, because there are a number of rationales they have articulated for this kind of discrimination that really are not credible in Nevada. For example, it is often argued in these cases that there is an interest relating to children and parenting. But in Nevada, separate and apart from the constitutional amendment, the state treats same-sex couple equally as parents in other respects. And so that can't be what the marriage amendment is about, because it has no effect on parenting."^[5] The plaintiffs argued that Nevada's contrast of marriage and domestic partnership, which it called "a second-class status", distinguished their case from Minnesota's lack of any provision for same-sex couples in 1972, when the Supreme Court in Baker v. Nelson refused to hear a challenge to Minnesota's restrictive marriage definition "for want of a substantial federal question."^[6]

As part of their equal protection claim, the plaintiffs argued that the court should evaluate distinctions based on sexual orientation using the heightened scrutiny standard. They did not assert a fundamental right to marry nor a due process claim, but focused on the equal protection claim and Nevada's disparate treatment of same-sex couples, being "so convinced that our equal protection claim is correct that we wanted to keep the focus of the case there.... And courts often like to decide questions no more broadly than they need to, to resolve a case.^[5][7]

A Nevada reporter noted that both Republican Gov. Sandoval, the principal defendant in the suit, and Democratic Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, who was representing him, tended to avoid public controversy and "both ... refused to fully engage in the political debate. They're framing their roles as technocrats doing an administrative job rather than politicians or ideologues wading into an emotional issue."^[8]

Judge Robert C. Jones, Chief Judge of the U.S. District Court of Nevada, held an initial hearing on August 10, 2012. The parties had agreed in advance on how they wanted the court to handle motions in the case. The plaintiffs agreed not to oppose the request by the Coalition for the Protection of Marriage, the original backers of the constitutional amendment and now based in Boise, Idaho, to intervene as a defendant. The defendants agreed that the court should postpone consideration of its arguments for summary dismissal^[9] until the case was fully briefed.^[10] Both sides asked the court to allow them to present expert testimony. Jones did not rule out expert testimony but expressed strong reservations, that it would require him to act "as a legislature". He said: "This area you're talking about ... is so broad it's across the entire United States. You're asking them to summarize thousands of incidences." Noting that several related cases were nearing possible consideration by the Supreme Court, he agreed the case should be expedited: "It makes sense to get this decided and off with the circus train." He thought Sevcik would make a good complement to the Ninth Circuit's decision in Perry v. Brown.^[11]

Jones scheduled oral argument for November 26 on all issues in the case, but on September 19 he canceled the oral argument and announced he would rule on the basis of the briefs alone.

District Court decision

On November 29, Jones ruled against the plaintiffs.^[12] He held that "the present challenge is in the main a garden-variety equal protection challenge precluded by Baker.... The equal protection claim is the same in this case as it was in Baker, whether the Equal Protection Clause prevents a state from refusing to permit same-sex marriages."

Jones also analyzed the plaintiffs' other arguments "so that the Court of Appeals need not remand for further proceedings should it rule that Baker does not control..." He identified the discrimination Nevada makes between marriages the state does and does not recognize as a distinction based not on gender, which would require him to use intermediate scrutiny, but on sexual orientation, where the rational basis standard applies, relying High Tech Gays v. Defense Industrial Security Clearance Office (1990). He explained his agreement with that case's determination that "homosexuals are not a suspect or quasi-suspect class" requiring a higher standard of review because "where no lingering effects of past discrimination are inherited, it is contemporary disadvantages that matter for the purpose of assessing disabilities due to discrimination. Any such disabilities with respect to homosexuals have been largely erased since 1990." He also disputed the Second Circuit's finding in Windsor v. United States (2012) that homosexuals are a politically powerless class: "The question of 'powerlessness' under an equal protection analysis requires that the group's chances of democratic success be virtually hopeless, not simply that its path to success is difficult or challenging because of democratic forces." Finally, applying rational basis review, Jones found that "The protection of the traditional institution of marriage ... is a legitimate state interest." If marriage is extended to same-sex couples, he wrote, "it is conceivable that a meaningful percentage of heterosexual persons would cease to value the civil institution as highly as they previously had ... leading to an increased percentage of out-of-wedlock children, single-parent families, ... or other unforeseen consequences." He also addressed issues not raised by the plaintiffs. Plaintiffs had referenced Romer v. Evans (1996) only to note that the Supreme Court in that case had found it unnecessary to consider more than rational basis review.^{[n 1]} Jones discussed Romer at length to show how in did not apply to Nevada's marriage restriction, since Romer addressed, he wrote, "an extreme case concerning a novel and ambitious type of law ... prevalent only under totalitarian regimes." Nevada's definition of marriage by contrast was "not based purely upon anti-homosexual animus, as the constitutional provision in Romer was."

Appeal

Attorneys for the plaintiffs filed an appeal on December 3, 2012 with the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.^[13] The Court originally planned to hear the case on a parallel track with a similar Hawaii same-sex marriage case, Jackson v. Abercrombie,^[14] until Hawaii's legalization of same-sex marriage as of December 2, 2013, mooted that case. The Court placed the case on hold pending the Supreme Court rulings in Hollingsworth v. Perry and United States v. Windsor^[15] on June 26. The Coalition for the Protection of Marriage on December 5, 2012, filed a petition for certiorari before judgment with the Supreme Court, asking that court to take up the case without waiting for action by the Court of Appeals.^[16] The Supreme Court denied that petition on June 27, 2013.^[17] On October 18, 2013, Lambda Legal filed its opening brief.^[18] On January 21, 2014, the state of Nevada submitted its reply brief.^[19] On January 24, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto announced she was reviewing the state's brief because the Ninth Circuit's decision in SmithKline Beecham Corporation v. Abbott Laboratories on January 21 meant that "these arguments are likely no longer tenable in the Ninth Circuit."^[20] In SmithKline, the Court held that distinctions based on sexual orientation are subject to the "heightened scrutiny" standard of review.^[21]

See also

• LGBT rights in Nevada
• Same-sex marriage in the United States

Notes

References

External links

• District Court ruling, November 29, 2012
• Plaintiffs' Motion for Summary Judgment, September 10, 2012
• District Court hearing transcript, August 10, 2012
• Complaint, April 10, 2012