Vermont Celebrates 10 Years of Civil Unions and the Fight For Equality

Marchers in support of civil unions arrive at the Statehouse in Montpelier for a rally in October 2000.

Tension built throughout 1999 as month after month passed without a decision from the Vermont Supreme Court on a case that challenged the justices to decide whether gay and lesbian couples were entitled to the same legal rights and protections as married male and female couples.

It was not a decision that could be rushed, explained Jeffrey Amestoy, then chief justice of the Vermont Supreme Court and now a fellow at the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. “It was a very significant case” that had generated a mountain of testimony, he said. “The court spent an extraordinary amount of time reviewing the briefs.”

Then on the morning of Dec. 20 — 10 years ago today — word spread that the court had ruled in the Baker case, named for Stan Baker, one of the six people who had challenged the restrictions on who could marry.

It was a decision that set in motion a decade of change, culminating earlier this year in enactment of a law allowing same-sex couples to marry in Vermont.

“The decade, from the Baker decision to marriage equality, represents an extraordinary journey of affirmation and legal achievement for gay and lesbian couples and the gay and lesbian community in Vermont,” said Rep. William Lippert, D-Hinesburg, a gay man and one of the people who ran with the baton of change handed down by the court. “We have had the opportunity to transform lives and transform our culture into a fairer, more welcoming community in Vermont.”

The path that events would take, however, was far from clear ten years ago.

“The court result astounded almost everyone,” said Amestoy, who wrote the majority opinion. “No one had offered the remedy that the court adopted.”

It wasn’t just the court’s finding in favor of granting same-sex couples all the rights and protections of marriage — the Hawaii Supreme Court had ruled similarly. It was the Vermont court’s remedy — that the Legislature had a responsibility to determine how to provide those rights and protections.

“We hold only that plaintiffs are entitled under Chapter I, Article 7, of the Vermont Constitution to obtain the same benefits and protections afforded by Vermont law to married opposite-sex couples. We do not purport to infringe upon the prerogatives of the Legislature to craft an appropriate means of addressing this constitutional mandate other than to note that the record here refers to a number of potentially constitutional statutory schemes from other jurisdictions.”

The ruling gave the Legislature a “reasonable period of time” to take action, during which time the case would remain open.

“In the event that the benefits and protections in question are not statutorily granted, plaintiffs may petition this court to order the remedy they originally sought.”

Lippert remembered the day of the decision. He was at his office in Burlington — he served then as executive director of Samara Foundation of Vermont — when a lawyer in a neighboring office came running down the hall with the news.

Lippert recalled experiencing a roller coaster of emotions. “Oh, they decided in our favor. Oh, not really.” It hit him, too, that he — as a legislator and vice chairman of the House Judiciary Committee at the time — would have a role in fashioning the remedy the ruling required.

It was a role he said he sought when he ran for the Legislature in 1994 and requested assignment on the Judiciary Committee.

“In the event that there was going to be something on civil rights, the Judiciary Committee would be where the action was,” he said. That was the case in 2000 “more than I ever dreamed.” [FULL STORY]