The Daily Tar Heel
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Tuesday, March 19, 2024 Newsletters Latest print issue

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The Daily Tar Heel

Same-sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that state bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. 

The decision gives gay couples the right to marry for the first time in 13 states. 

Gay and lesbian couples in North Carolina have been able to marry since November 2014, when a federal judge struck down a similar ban by the state.

The Supreme Court also ruled that marriages between same-sex couples be recognized out of state. 

The Court's opinion highlighted same-sex couples' equal right to the institution of marriage. 

"It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority decision. "Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right." 

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