Georgia General Assembly referred same-sex marriage and civil union ban to voters as constitutional amendment

On March 31, 2004, the Georgia General Assembly gave final passage to Senate Resolution 595 (SR 595), referring a proposed state constitutional amendment to the November 2004 general election ballot. The Georgia House of Representatives cast the decisive final vote 122 to 52 — clearing the two-thirds supermajority threshold required for a constitutional amendment referral — after the State Senate had previously passed SR 595 by the same supermajority requirement earlier in the session. The proposed amendment provided that Georgia "shall recognize as marriage only the union of man and woman," explicitly prohibited same-sex marriages, barred the state from extending civil-union benefits to same-sex couples, stripped Georgia courts of subject-matter jurisdiction over claims arising from same-sex relationships, and preempted any future legislative action legalizing such unions.

The amendment bundled multiple distinct restrictions — a marriage definition, a civil-union exclusion, and a court-jurisdiction carve-out — in a single ballot measure. Scholars examining the referral, including Kurt G. Kastorf writing in the Georgia State University Law Review, analyzed how this bundling strained Georgia's single-subject constitutional rule, which prohibits combining unrelated provisions in a single measure. The amendment drew immediate legal challenge on that basis. Georgia voters approved Amendment 1 on November 2, 2004, by a 76 percent to 24 percent margin, constitutionally entrenching the ban.

Updates

2004-10-26 — Georgia Supreme Court upheld ballot placement in O'Kelley v. Cox [5]

In O'Kelley v. Cox, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled 5-2 that Amendment 1 did not violate the single-subject rule and was valid to appear on the November ballot.

2006-07-06 — Georgia Supreme Court upheld amendment in Perdue v. O'Kelley [6]

In Perdue v. O'Kelley, the Georgia Supreme Court reversed a lower-court ruling that had struck the amendment down on single-subject grounds, unanimously upholding the amendment 6-0.

2015-01-21 — Federal court struck down Georgia's same-sex marriage ban in Inniss v. Aderhold [8]

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia ruled in Inniss v. Aderhold, 80 F.Supp.3d 1335, that Georgia's constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage violated the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment.

2015-06-26 — U.S. Supreme Court rendered amendment void in Obergefell v. Hodges [7]

In Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015), the United States Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples have a constitutional right to marry under the Fourteenth Amendment, rendering Amendment 1 unconstitutional and of no further effect.