June 26 Supreme Court rulings
Title
June 26 Supreme Court rulings
Subject
LGBTQ civil rights cases
Description
This article looks at the very consequential U.S. Supreme Court decisions handed down on June 26 in various years that furthered LGBTQ rights.
Creator
Mary Bishop-Baldwin
Publisher
Oklahomans for Equality History Project
Date
June 26, 2026
Rights
Copyright (c) 2026 Oklahomans for Equality
Text
The Oklahomans for Equality History Project remembers with pride the U.S. Supreme Court opinions handed down on June 26 in various years that made monumental strides in the quest for equality for LGBTQ people.
We think June 26 should be National Equality Day!
• On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court struck down state sodomy laws across the nation in Lawrence v. Texas.
• On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court killed the Defense of Marriage Act in U.S. v. Windsor AND overturned Prop 8 in California.
• On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land in Obergefell v. Hodges.
• On June 26, 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that all states must provide married same-sex couples the same "constellation of benefits" and recognition afforded to heterosexual couples.
The OkEq History Project’s archives remind us of how Tulsa acknowledged all those cases and rulings.
June 26, 2003
The Spring 2003 edition of the TOHR Torch, the publication of Oklahomans for Equality’s forerunner, Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights, noted that Oklahoma was one of only four states that still specifically criminalized same-sex sodomy at that time. The others were Texas, Kansas and Missouri. The Arkansas Supreme Court had overturned that state’s same-sex sodomy law the previous year.
The U.S. Supreme Court was expected to issue a ruling in Lawrence v. Texas in June, and an article in the Spring 2003 Torch announced that Lee Taft, Lambda Legal regional director in Dallas, was to discuss the case at Fellowship Congregational United Church of Christ in Tulsa on April 14. Lambda Legal had represented the two defendants in a criminal sodomy case and led the case through appeals. “Battling for years in the Texas courts, we sought to overturn the criminal convictions (which made the two men registerable ‘sex offenders’ in several states) and to have Texas’s law declared unconstitutional,” Lambda says on its website. “When the highest court in Texas eventually refused to even hear our arguments, we convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. In a stunning victory, the highest court in the land found the “Homosexual Conduct” law unconstitutional and established, for the first time, that lesbians and gay men share the same fundamental liberty right to private sexual intimacy with another adult that heterosexuals have.”
The ruling overturned the June 30, 1986, precedent of Bowers v. Hardwick, in which the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that states had the right to criminalize sodomy on the grounds of public morality.
The TOHR Torch noted that “sodomy laws (were) used to justify discrimination against lesbians and gay men … in every day life; they’re invoked in denying employment to gay people, in refusing custody or visitation for gay parents, and even in intimidating gay people out of exercising their free speech rights.”
The Lawrence ruling set the stage for later advances in the struggle for equal rights under the law, with each case building on those that had come before.
The Summer 2003 TOHR Torch included an article from the History Project outlining the history of sodomy laws, with a focus on Oklahoma, where in 1890 the pre-statehood territory’s Legislature had codified its sodomy law with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. The relevant statute, Title 21, Section 21-886, refers to the crime as “the detestable and abominable crime against nature.” State courts made consensual heterosexual sodomy legal in 1986 but retained the right to prosecute consensual homosexual conduct.
That Summer 2003 article noted that “Oklahoma’s law has become legal justification for firing gay and lesbian teachers, administrators and school personnel, nursing home workers and others. These Oklahomans and other gays and lesbians are therefore required to choose between their livelihoods and their ability to be open about who they are. As a result, gays and lesbians in Oklahoma are deterred from seeking political and social change.”
With repercussions like those, it’s no wonder so many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Oklahomans continued to live in the closet. The Lawrence ruling made it possible for many to come out of the shadows and was a major building block for the legal victories that came later.
June 26, 2013
Ten years later, two huge advances in the quest for marriage equality came out of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 26, 2013.
The July 3, 2013, OkEq eNews reported that on the evening of Wednesday, June 26, 2013, more than 400 celebrants gathered at a Decision Day Rally at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center to celebrate that morning’s Supreme Court rulings on both the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8, making same-sex marriage legal in California again. The group heard from attorney and OkEq board member Mike Redman and the plaintiffs in the Oklahoma marriage equality lawsuit, Mary Bishop & Sharon Baldwin and Sue Barton & Gay Phillips. “There was a champagne toast and a fabulous wedding cake from Merritt's Bakery,” the article says.
The eNews article shares photos from the Decision Day Rally.
Oklahomans for Equality Board of Directors President Angela Sivadon, center, and her now-wife, Mary Robinson, serve wedding cake to the crowd at the Decision Day rally in 2013.
The overturning of DOMA meant that the United States government would recognize any marriage – including same-sex marriages – recognized by any state. It did not, however, force states to recognize same-sex marriages. That fight was left for other cases, but, like Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor was a fundamental building block for those that followed.
In California, the nation’s largest state, marriages of same-sex couples had been legal since June 17, 2008, after a May 15 ruling by that state’s Supreme Court. But a group of people, known as the proponents of Prop 8, gathered enough signatures to put Proposition 8, a proposed state constitutional amendment, on the ballot. Prop 8 was to define marriage as between only a man and a woman and to stop the same-sex marriages. When they went to the polls on Nov. 4, 2008, more than 13 million Californians voted 52% to 48% in favor of the state question. No more same-sex marriages were allowed – at least for the time being – but about 18,000 had already been solemnized. The resulting amendment was challenged in court in Hollingsworth v. Perry, and on June 26, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the proponents, who defended the constitutional amendment after the state of California refused to do so, did not have standing – or the legal right – to defend the case. Therefore, the Aug. 4, 2010, ruling of U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker that Prop 8 violated the U.S. Constitution was upheld. Same-sex marriages began again in California on June 28, 2013.
June 26, 2015
Marriage equality was achieved for all the land on June 26, 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that marriage is a fundamental right that is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to everyone, including same-sex couples. Oklahoma had achieved marriage equality through the courts a year earlier, but all the states that still did not have marriage equality were required at that time to authorize and recognize marriages of same-sex couples.
Oklahomans for Equality proclaimed in its June 30, 2015, eNews that “at long last, there is no such thing as ‘gay marriage’ – now it's just MARRIAGE!” The eNews article shares photos from the Marriage Equality Celebration Rally that OkEq held at the Equality Center that evening.
Attendees at the Marriage Equality Celebration Rally on June 26, 2015 – the day the U.S. Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land in the Obergefell case – give attorneys Don Holladay and Joe Thai, front left, a standing ovation. Holladay and Thai, along with attorneys James Warner III and Jeffrey Fisher, represented the plaintiffs in the Oklahoma marriage equality lawsuit, which they had won the year before.
June 26, 2017
The U.S. Supreme Court followed up exactly two years later with a ruling that clarified for states that didn’t yet get it what it had meant by marriage equality in 2015. Its ruling in Pavan v. Smith would establish that all states must provide married same-sex couples with the same benefits and recognition they afford to heterosexual couples.
The plaintiffs were two legally married Arkansas same-sex couples, the Jacobses and the Pavans, who had conceived children through anonymous sperm donation. The state refused to list the wives of the birth mothers as co-parents on the children’s birth certificates, citing a state law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law was “inconsistent” with its Obergefell ruling.
“When an opposite-sex couple conceives a child by way of anonymous sperm donation – just as the petitioners did here – state law requires the placement of the birth mother’s husband on the child’s birth certificate. … And that is so even though (as the State concedes) the husband “is definitively not the biological father” in those circumstances. … Arkansas may not, consistent with Obergefell, deny married same-sex couples that recognition,” the Supreme Court wrote in its decision.
The Oklahomans for Equality History Project encourages you to learn more about OkEq’s history and the history of our rights by visiting our online archives at history.okeq.org.
We think June 26 should be National Equality Day!
• On June 26, 2003, the Supreme Court struck down state sodomy laws across the nation in Lawrence v. Texas.
• On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court killed the Defense of Marriage Act in U.S. v. Windsor AND overturned Prop 8 in California.
• On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land in Obergefell v. Hodges.
• On June 26, 2017, the Supreme Court ruled that all states must provide married same-sex couples the same "constellation of benefits" and recognition afforded to heterosexual couples.
The OkEq History Project’s archives remind us of how Tulsa acknowledged all those cases and rulings.
June 26, 2003
The Spring 2003 edition of the TOHR Torch, the publication of Oklahomans for Equality’s forerunner, Tulsa Oklahomans for Human Rights, noted that Oklahoma was one of only four states that still specifically criminalized same-sex sodomy at that time. The others were Texas, Kansas and Missouri. The Arkansas Supreme Court had overturned that state’s same-sex sodomy law the previous year.
The U.S. Supreme Court was expected to issue a ruling in Lawrence v. Texas in June, and an article in the Spring 2003 Torch announced that Lee Taft, Lambda Legal regional director in Dallas, was to discuss the case at Fellowship Congregational United Church of Christ in Tulsa on April 14. Lambda Legal had represented the two defendants in a criminal sodomy case and led the case through appeals. “Battling for years in the Texas courts, we sought to overturn the criminal convictions (which made the two men registerable ‘sex offenders’ in several states) and to have Texas’s law declared unconstitutional,” Lambda says on its website. “When the highest court in Texas eventually refused to even hear our arguments, we convinced the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case. In a stunning victory, the highest court in the land found the “Homosexual Conduct” law unconstitutional and established, for the first time, that lesbians and gay men share the same fundamental liberty right to private sexual intimacy with another adult that heterosexuals have.”
The ruling overturned the June 30, 1986, precedent of Bowers v. Hardwick, in which the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that states had the right to criminalize sodomy on the grounds of public morality.
The TOHR Torch noted that “sodomy laws (were) used to justify discrimination against lesbians and gay men … in every day life; they’re invoked in denying employment to gay people, in refusing custody or visitation for gay parents, and even in intimidating gay people out of exercising their free speech rights.”
The Lawrence ruling set the stage for later advances in the struggle for equal rights under the law, with each case building on those that had come before.
The Summer 2003 TOHR Torch included an article from the History Project outlining the history of sodomy laws, with a focus on Oklahoma, where in 1890 the pre-statehood territory’s Legislature had codified its sodomy law with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. The relevant statute, Title 21, Section 21-886, refers to the crime as “the detestable and abominable crime against nature.” State courts made consensual heterosexual sodomy legal in 1986 but retained the right to prosecute consensual homosexual conduct.
That Summer 2003 article noted that “Oklahoma’s law has become legal justification for firing gay and lesbian teachers, administrators and school personnel, nursing home workers and others. These Oklahomans and other gays and lesbians are therefore required to choose between their livelihoods and their ability to be open about who they are. As a result, gays and lesbians in Oklahoma are deterred from seeking political and social change.”
With repercussions like those, it’s no wonder so many gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Oklahomans continued to live in the closet. The Lawrence ruling made it possible for many to come out of the shadows and was a major building block for the legal victories that came later.
June 26, 2013
Ten years later, two huge advances in the quest for marriage equality came out of the U.S. Supreme Court on June 26, 2013.
The July 3, 2013, OkEq eNews reported that on the evening of Wednesday, June 26, 2013, more than 400 celebrants gathered at a Decision Day Rally at the Dennis R. Neill Equality Center to celebrate that morning’s Supreme Court rulings on both the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8, making same-sex marriage legal in California again. The group heard from attorney and OkEq board member Mike Redman and the plaintiffs in the Oklahoma marriage equality lawsuit, Mary Bishop & Sharon Baldwin and Sue Barton & Gay Phillips. “There was a champagne toast and a fabulous wedding cake from Merritt's Bakery,” the article says.
The eNews article shares photos from the Decision Day Rally.
Oklahomans for Equality Board of Directors President Angela Sivadon, center, and her now-wife, Mary Robinson, serve wedding cake to the crowd at the Decision Day rally in 2013.
The overturning of DOMA meant that the United States government would recognize any marriage – including same-sex marriages – recognized by any state. It did not, however, force states to recognize same-sex marriages. That fight was left for other cases, but, like Lawrence v. Texas, United States v. Windsor was a fundamental building block for those that followed.
In California, the nation’s largest state, marriages of same-sex couples had been legal since June 17, 2008, after a May 15 ruling by that state’s Supreme Court. But a group of people, known as the proponents of Prop 8, gathered enough signatures to put Proposition 8, a proposed state constitutional amendment, on the ballot. Prop 8 was to define marriage as between only a man and a woman and to stop the same-sex marriages. When they went to the polls on Nov. 4, 2008, more than 13 million Californians voted 52% to 48% in favor of the state question. No more same-sex marriages were allowed – at least for the time being – but about 18,000 had already been solemnized. The resulting amendment was challenged in court in Hollingsworth v. Perry, and on June 26, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the proponents, who defended the constitutional amendment after the state of California refused to do so, did not have standing – or the legal right – to defend the case. Therefore, the Aug. 4, 2010, ruling of U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker that Prop 8 violated the U.S. Constitution was upheld. Same-sex marriages began again in California on June 28, 2013.
June 26, 2015
Marriage equality was achieved for all the land on June 26, 2015, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges that marriage is a fundamental right that is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution to everyone, including same-sex couples. Oklahoma had achieved marriage equality through the courts a year earlier, but all the states that still did not have marriage equality were required at that time to authorize and recognize marriages of same-sex couples.
Oklahomans for Equality proclaimed in its June 30, 2015, eNews that “at long last, there is no such thing as ‘gay marriage’ – now it's just MARRIAGE!” The eNews article shares photos from the Marriage Equality Celebration Rally that OkEq held at the Equality Center that evening.
Attendees at the Marriage Equality Celebration Rally on June 26, 2015 – the day the U.S. Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land in the Obergefell case – give attorneys Don Holladay and Joe Thai, front left, a standing ovation. Holladay and Thai, along with attorneys James Warner III and Jeffrey Fisher, represented the plaintiffs in the Oklahoma marriage equality lawsuit, which they had won the year before.
June 26, 2017
The U.S. Supreme Court followed up exactly two years later with a ruling that clarified for states that didn’t yet get it what it had meant by marriage equality in 2015. Its ruling in Pavan v. Smith would establish that all states must provide married same-sex couples with the same benefits and recognition they afford to heterosexual couples.
The plaintiffs were two legally married Arkansas same-sex couples, the Jacobses and the Pavans, who had conceived children through anonymous sperm donation. The state refused to list the wives of the birth mothers as co-parents on the children’s birth certificates, citing a state law. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the law was “inconsistent” with its Obergefell ruling.
“When an opposite-sex couple conceives a child by way of anonymous sperm donation – just as the petitioners did here – state law requires the placement of the birth mother’s husband on the child’s birth certificate. … And that is so even though (as the State concedes) the husband “is definitively not the biological father” in those circumstances. … Arkansas may not, consistent with Obergefell, deny married same-sex couples that recognition,” the Supreme Court wrote in its decision.
The Oklahomans for Equality History Project encourages you to learn more about OkEq’s history and the history of our rights by visiting our online archives at history.okeq.org.
Original Format
Article
Files
Citation
Mary Bishop-Baldwin, “June 26 Supreme Court rulings,” OKEQ History Project, accessed June 26, 2026, https://history.okeq.org/items/show/1386.