The US Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage is a legal right across the United States.
In a historic 5-4 decision, Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for the majority ruled that marriage is a constitutional right for all.
“No union is more profound than marriage,” he wrote, backed by the court’s four more liberal justices.
It is unclear how soon marriage licences will be issued in states where gay unions were previously prohibited.
Before the ruling on Thursday, gay couples could marry in 37 states in addition to Washington DC.
Loud cheers erupted outside the court after the ruling was announced, said the BBC’s Paul Blake at the Supreme Court.
Scores of people had camped out for hours awaiting the news.
One of the demonstrators, Jordan Monaghan, called his mother from his mobile phone amid the celebrations.
“Hey mom, I’m at the Supreme Court. Your son can have a husband now,” Mr Monaghan said.
WASHINGTON—The Supreme Court ruled same-sex partners have a constitutional right to marry, sweeping away state bans on gay unions and extending marriage equality nationwide.
The 5-4 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges et. al. struck down restrictions on same-sex marriage in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee that a Cincinnati-based federal appeals court upheld last year. It also validated a series of lower court opinions that expanded the institution across most of the nation since 2012, following an earlier Supreme Court holding requiring federal recognition of gay and lesbian marriages in states that had chosen to authorize the practice.
The opinion by Justice Anthony Kennedy caps a rapid shift in legal and societal acceptance of same-sex marriage over the past decade. It also marks a revolution in American society, one that in the course of a generation saw gay rights move to the front line from the fringes of a national debate over the meaning of equality.
Massachusetts in 2003 became the first U.S. state to recognize gay marriages, a development that led to some states recognizing the practice and dozens of states amending state constitutions to forbid it.
Those constitutional bans began to fall after the 2013 U.S. v. Windsor ruling, which invalidated provisions of the federal Defense of Marriage Act. The opinion invoked two strands of reasoning: one indicating Congress should honor states’ definitions of marriage; another suggesting the Defense of Marriage Act served no purpose other than to stigmatize and demean same-sex relationships.
Lower courts overwhelmingly read the Windsor opinion as requiring them to strike down as unconstitutional state marriage restrictions, ending bans in more than a dozen states.
Ahead of the ruling, same-sex marriage was legal in 36 states and the District of Columbia. That includes Alabama, where a federal judge has ruled the state must recognize same-sex marriages but put the decision on hold pending the high court’s ruling on the matter.
The appeal before the Supreme Court was brought by 16 gay couples challenging marriage bans in the four states. The couples argued the U.S. Constitution entitles them to unions on the same terms as heterosexuals, and that state restrictions hurt them financially and demean their dignity by denying their unions legal recognition.
The four states had argued the courts should defer to the political process, leaving the decision of whether to recognize same-sex unions to the legislatures of each state.
While the ruling deals directly with marriage, it could also lead to changes in laws that can be read to allow discrimination based on sexual orientation. For instance, future legal contests may determine whether tax-exempt religious schools can reject gays and lesbians, and whether private businesses can cite religious reasons for refusing service based on sexual orientation.
Though the Supreme Court has been broadly supportive both of religious expression and gay and lesbian equality, the ultimate resolution of such conflicts remained unclear.