Learn About the Case

After nearly a decade fighting for marriage equality in New Jersey, Lambda Legal is back in court representing seven same-sex couples and their children harmed from the unequal civil union system, and Garden State Equality, New Jersey’s statewide LGBT advocacy organization.

The case combines both state and federal claims. It argues that the civil union law violates both the New Jersey Constitution and the Fourteenth Amendment of the federal Constitution.

Civil unions place same-sex couples and their children in an inferior status to different-sex couples and their children. Without full marriage equality, same-sex couples are denied workplace benefits and protections equal to those accorded to married people, and they are blocked from seeing their loved ones during medical emergencies. This exclusion deprives them of certainty in their legal rights and status, and often increases financial burdens.

Read more about the case below, including the complaint we’ve filed in New Jersey Superior Court.

Why We Need Marriage Equality in New Jersey

By Kevin Cathcart, Lambda Legal Executive Director

On October 10, 2010, Daniel Weiss got a phone call no one wants to get. His civil union partner, John Grant, with whom he lived in Asbury Park, New Jersey, had been hit by a car in New York City. John was at Bellevue Hospital and was hemorrhaging in his brain.

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A History of the Fight for Marriage Equality in New Jersey

By Hayley Gorenberg, Lambda Legal Deputy Legal Director

Lambda Legal has been making the case for marriage equality in New Jersey for nearly a decade. Now we’re back in court to finish what we started, and to fulfill the objective the state’s highest court ordered in its 2006 decision in our Lewis v. Harris case: equal rights for New Jersey’s lesbian and gay couples.

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