laws excluding same-sex marriage is confined to the Federal Government (leaving the second, state-law shoe to be dropped later, maybe next Term). But I am only guessing.
Equally perplexing are the opinion's references to "the Constitution's guarantee of equality" Ibid. Near the end of the opinion, we are told that although the "equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment makes [the] Fifth Amendment [due process] right all the more specific and all the better understood and preserved"—what can that mean?—"the Fifth Amendment itself withdraws from Government the power to degrade or demean in the way this law does." Ante, at 25. The only possible interpretation of this statement is that the Equal Protection Clause, even the Equal Protection Clause as incorporated in the Due Process Clause, is not the basis for today's holding. But the portion of the majority opinion that explains why DOMA is unconstitutional (Part IV) begins by citing Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 (1954), Department of Agriculture v. Moreno, 413 U.S. 528 (1973), and Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620 (1996)—all of which are equal-protection cases.[1] And those three cases are the only authorities that the Court cites in Part IV about the Constitution's meaning, except for its citation of Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U.S. 558 (2003) (not an equal-protection case) to support its passing assertion that the Constitution protects the "moral and sexual choices" of same-sex couples, ante, at 23.
Moreover, if this is meant to be an equal-protection opinion, it is a confusing one. The opinion does not resolve and indeed does not even mention what had been the
- ↑ Since the Equal Protection Clause technically applies only against the States, see U.S. Const., Amdt. 14, Bolling and Moreno, dealing with federal action, relied upon "the equal protection component of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment," Moreno, 413 U.S., at 533.
