Initial Thoughts on Iowa Same-sex Marriage Case

In Varnum v. Brien, the Iowa Supreme Court unanimously held the state's ban on same-sex marriage was unconstitutional under the state constitution's equal protection clause. The Volokh Conspiracy Blog has a more detailed summary of the holdings of the case, but below are a few of my initial impressions.

• The opinion is very readable; Justice Cady wrote it so that everyone, lawyers and non-lawyers alike, can easily understand it.
  
  
• The Court held that discrimination based on sexual orientation requires at least intermediate scrutiny (court explicitly chose not to consider if it deserved strict scrutiny), which the statute failed to meet.
  
  
• Given the classic, but flawed, argument that children are best rasied by opposite-sex parents, I found the court's recognition that the argument lacks any support in science important. On page 55, in footnote 26 it said:
  

  The research appears to strongly support the conclusion that same-sex couples foster the same wholesome environment as opposite-sex couples and suggests that the traditional notion that children need a mother and a father to be raised into healthy, well-adjusted adults is based more on stereotype than anything else.

  In responding to the experts that the state offered, the Court also noted:
  

  [W]e acknowledge the existence of reasoned opinions that dual-gender parenting is the optimal environment for children. These opinions, while thoughtful and sincere, were largely unsupported by reliable scientific studies.

You can find the full text of the opinion here and our previous coverage of the Iowa case here.

UPDATE: Iowa Supreme Court has issued an official summary.