Federal judge sides with Indiana same-sex couple seeking marriage recognition

Young’s 28-day restraining order instructs the state to recognize the out-of-state marriage of Munster residents Amy Sandler and Niki Quasney, who were legally married in Massachusetts last year.

The order does not apply to any of the other plaintiffs in five legal challenges to Indiana’s marriage law including to any of the other plaintiffs in Quasney and Sandler’s larger case against the marriage law, which prohibits same-sex marriage and recognition of those unions conducted legally in other states.

Nevertheless, the order could bode well for the legal challenges, one of which includes Evansville police officer Karen Kajmowicz-Vaughn among a group of Indiana law enforcement officials suing the state to secure equal pension benefits for same-sex partners.

The five legal challenges are assigned to Young, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.

In making his finding Thursday, Young noted “a tsunami of recent cases supporting the plaintiffs’ position throughout the country in the federal courts.”

“The court finds, as applied to (Quasney and Sandler), Indiana’s law, which prohibits the recognition of same-sex marriages even if the marriage is lawful in the place where it is solemnized, likely violates the United States Constitution’s equal protection clause and due process clause,” Young said.

“The Indiana statute’s principle effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal.”

During a roughly hourlong hearing Thursday, Quasney and Sandler’s attorney argued that a gravely ill Quasney is running out of time and needs her marriage to Sandler to be recognized by the state so she can “die in dignity.”

“And so that Niki and her (two young) children will know what it feels like to be respected by the state of Indiana as part of a married family while she is still alive,” said Paul Castillo, Staff Attorney for Lambda Legal.

Castillo also argued that Quasney had concerns about “security in terms of the financial well-being of her wife and her family.”

Lambda Legal has argued Quasney and Sandler need to be recognized as legally married in Indiana “to receive the full protections that every other married family in Indiana receives.”

“Niki wants certainty that Amy will receive an accurate death certificate so that she can take care of her (Niki’s) affairs and access the safety net available to a surviving spouse and young children,” the organization said in a statement issued after Thursday’s hearing.

Arguing for the state, Solicitor General Tom Fisher told Young that the state’s marriage statute does not allow for hardship exceptions.

“The court does not adjudicate emotional equity; it adjudicates legal rights,” Fisher said.

If the issue is Quasney’s death certificate, Fisher said, that can be corrected later if a court order or legislative amendment changes the law. The document would then legitimize the couple’s marriage.

“That is not irreparable harm,” he said. “(The death certificate) can be repaired very straightforwardly.”

Fisher said any offense to Quasney and Sandler’s dignity at not being recognized as legally married may be painful, real and sincerely felt, but there is no constitutional right to have one’s out-of-state marriage recognized by the state.

But Young presaged his ruling during arguments by posing several challenging questions to the state’s representative. One of them took the judge and the solicitor general into a brief discussion of the marriage law’s philosophical underpinnings.

Young asked Fisher if he would agree that same-sex couples are treated differently than traditional opposite-sex couples under Indiana law. Fisher agreed, noting that one of the marriage law’s rationales is encouraging couples to have children within the confines of marriage. That, he said, works to the benefit of children resulting from unplanned pregnancies.

Two partners of the same gender do not have that kind of procreational potential, Fisher said.

But after taking a brief recess to consider his ruling, Young said Quasney and Sandler’s peace of mind and dignity is very much to the point for him.

“There is no adequate remedy at law for this situation. Only the recognition of her marriage by the state that she calls home will give Ms. Niki Quasney the peace of mind she deserves while fighting for her life,” the judge said.

“ ... Additionally, state recognition of their marriage brings financial benefits, health care decision benefits and death benefits.”

Afterward, the Indiana Attorney General’s Office stressed the temporary restraining order, which lasts until May 8, deals solely with Quasney and Sandler in its requirement of the state to recognize the lesbian couple’s Massachusetts marriage. The court is expected to schedule a preliminary injunction hearing on the couple’s request to extend the order indefinitely.

County clerks will be notified that the outcome of Thursday’s hearing doesn’t provide for marriage licenses to be issued to same-sex couples in the state. The legal requirements for granting marriage licenses in Indiana stay the same, according to Bryan Corbin, spokesman for the Attorney General’s Office.

Corbin noted that temporary restraining orders cannot be appealed, and the legal issues in the case will be considered “more fully” at the upcoming preliminary injunction hearing.

Staff Writer Chelsea Schneider contributed to this report.