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Referendum on same-sex marriage
Referendum on same-sex marriage
| Field | Value | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| name | Constitutional Amendment 2 | |||
| title | *Hawaii Marriage Amendment* | |||
| yes | 285,384 | |||
| no | 117,827 | |||
| total | 412,520 | |||
| electorate | 601,404 | |||
| turnoutpct | 67.19 | |||
| map | File:1998 Hawaii Constitutional Amendment 2 election results map by county.svg | |||
| {{legend | #47729E | 70–80% | border | 1px #AAAAAA solid}} |
| {{legend | #7D9CBB | 60–70% | border | 1px #AAAAAA solid}} |
| {{legend | #808080 | No vote | border | 1px #AAAAAA solid}} |
| notes | Source: |
Yes No vote
Constitutional Amendment 2 of 1998 amended the Constitution of Hawaii, granting the state legislature the power to prevent same-sex marriage from being conducted or recognized in Hawaii. Amendment 2 was the first constitutional amendment adopted in the United States that specifically targeted same-sex partnerships.
In 1993, the Hawaii State Supreme Court ruled in Baehr v. Lewin, , that refusing to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples was discriminatory under that state's constitution. However, the court did not immediately order the state to begin issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples; rather, it remanded the case to the trial court and ordered the state to justify its position. After the trial court judge rejected the state's justifications for limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples in 1996 (but stayed his ruling to allow the state to appeal to the Supreme Court again), the Hawaii State Legislature passed a proposed constitutional amendment during the 1997 session that would overrule the Supreme Court's 1993 ruling and allow the Legislature to ban same-sex marriage. This constitutional amendment appeared on the 1998 general election ballot as Constitutional Amendment 2.
The question that appeared on the ballot for voters was:
Amendment 2 differed from amendments that followed in other states in that it did not write a ban on same-sex marriage into the state's constitution; rather, it allowed the state legislature to enact such a ban. On November 3, 1998, Hawaii voters approved the amendment by a vote of 69.2–28.6%, and the state legislature exercised its power to ban same-sex marriage.
The language added by the amendment reads:
On October 14, 2013, Hawaii Attorney General David M. Louie stated in a formal legal opinion that Amendment 2 does not prevent the state legislature from legalizing same-sex marriage, which it did in November 2013 with the Hawaii Marriage Equality Act.
On November 5, 2024, Hawaii held a referendum to remove the amendment from the state constitution. The measure passed by a vote of 55.9%-44.1%
This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.
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