This is the second of two columns discussing U.S. Supreme Court decisions from the 2014-15 term in the area of labor and employment law. This month we review rulings pertaining to recognition of same-sex marriage, the validity of health-care subsidies issued by federal marketplaces under the Affordable Care Act, the tests for proving religious discrimination and pregnancy discrimination, and the standards governing claims for retiree benefits arising from collective-bargaining agreements.

Same-Sex Marriage

In the historic decision of Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 SCt 2584 (2015), the Supreme Court held on June 26, 2015, that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry in all states and all states must recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states. The ruling has significant implications for employers, as same-sex spouses are now entitled to the rights extended to opposite-sex spouses under both federal and state law.

Obergefell comes exactly two years after the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Windsor, 133 SCt 2675 (2013), that “spouse” includes same-sex spouses for purposes of federal law. However, Windsor addressed only the issue of whether the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages for federal law purposes. Obergefell was a consolidation of petitioners' separate lawsuits against state officials in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, claiming the states violated the Fourteenth Amendment by denying petitioners the right to marry and by not recognizing their marriages that were lawfully performed in another state.

In the 5-4 decision authored by Justice Anthony Kennedy, the Supreme Court concluded that under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, the fundamental right to marriage applies with equal force to same-sex couples. Thus, laws banning the right of same-sex couples to marry were “in essence unequal” as they denied same-sex couples all the benefits afforded to opposite-sex couples. In finding states must recognize marriages performed elsewhere, Kennedy reasoned that “[b]eing married in one State but having that valid marriage denied in another is one of 'the most perplexing and stressing complication[s]' in the law of domestic relations.”