‘State-sanctioned prejudice’: federal courts overturn marriage amendments in Mississippi and Arkansas
Two more states have had their voter-approved marriage protection laws overturned by federal judges, this time in Mississippi and Arkansas . In two separate rulings Tuesday, Judges Kristine Baker in Little Rock, Arkansas , and Carlton Reeves in Jackson, Mississippi, ruled that laws defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman violate homosexuals’ rights under the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution . Both judges are appointees of President Barack Obama . In the Arkansas decision, Baker quoted a previous court ruling in asserting that “times can blind us to certain truths and later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress. As the Constitution endures, persons in every generation can invoke its principles in their own search for greater freedom.” Baker concluded that “by precluding same-sex couples from exercising their fundamental right to marry in Arkansas, by not recognizing valid same-sex mar