Baker v. Nelson
Baker v. Nelson, 291 Minn. 310 (Minn. 1971), was a case in which the Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that Minnesota law limited marriage to opposite-sex couples, and that this limitation did not violate the United States Constitution. Upon Review The United States Supreme Court, 409 U.S. 810 (1972), dismissed the appeal "for want of [a] substantial federal question".
Examining Precedent of the United States Supreme Court shows the clear and explicit directive that dismissals "for want of a substantial federal question" are binding precedents on all lower Federal Courts.
"[U]ntil the Supreme Court should instruct otherwise, inferior federal courts had best adhere to the view that the Court has branded a question as unsubstantial". Hicks v. Miranda, 422 U.S. 332, 344 (1975) "[D]ismissals for want of a substantial federal question without doubt reject the specific challenges presented in the statement of jurisdiction." Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173, 176 (1977). Lower Federal Courts are expressely prohibited from ruling in a way inconsistant with binding precedent. “[Summary Decisions] prevent lower courts from coming to opposite conclusions on the precise issues presented and necessarily decided by those actions.” Mandel v. Bradley, 432 U.S. 173, 176 (1977)
This is explicit not only in the holdings of the United States Supreme Court, but also the holdings of other Circuit Courts. [L]ower courts are bound by summary decision by this Court ‘until such time as the Court informs [them] that [they] are not. Doe v. Hodgson, 478 F.2d 537, 539 (2nd Cir. 1973)
Baker is binding precedent and until overruled by the United States Supreme Court, it remains that way.
Facts
In 1971, two men, Richard John Baker and James Michael McConnell, applied to Gerald R. Nelson, the clerk of Minnesota's Hennepin County District Court, for a marriage license. Nelson denied the request on the sole grounds that the two were of the same sex. Baker and McConnell then sued Nelson, arguing that Minnesota law permitted same-sex marriages, and that Nelson's interpretation that it did not violated their rights under the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution. The trial court ruled Nelson was not required to issue Baker and McConnell a marriage license, and specifically directed that they not be issued a license. On appeal, the Minnesota Supreme Court affirmed the trial court's ruling, and specifically ruled that Minnesota's limiting of marriage to opposite-sex unions "does not offend the First, Eighth, Ninth, or Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution".
Opinion of the court
The Minnesota Supreme Court ruled that the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967)—in which the Court ruled that a statute probiting interracial marriages was unconstitutional—was not applicable to the Baker case. The Minnesota Supreme Court acknowledged the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits some state restrictions upon the right to marry, but that "in commonsense and in a constitutional sense, there is a clear distinction between a marital restriction based merely upon race and one based upon the fundamental difference in sex".
Subsequent history
Wilson v. Ake
Baker was cited as precedent in the January 19, 2005 case of Wilson v. Ake, argued before James S. Moody, Jr., of the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Tampa Division. In that case, two Florida women, married the previous summer in Massachusetts, sued Florida and the federal government, arguing that Florida's refusal to recognize their marriage, and the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), were violations of their rights under the United States Constitution. The district court dismissed the case, ruling that the U.S. Supreme Court's Summary Affirmance in Baker was binding on the district court—which meant that the District Court was required to uphold DOMA and the Florida marriage statute as constitutional.