Wisconsin Legislature gave final passage to constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage

On February 28, 2006, the Wisconsin Assembly voted 62-31, with six members paired, to concur in 2005 Senate Joint Resolution 53 (SJR53), a proposed amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution providing that only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in the state and barring any substantially similar legal status. The Wisconsin Senate had adopted SJR53 by a vote of 19-14 on December 6, 2005; Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) was the resolution's lead Senate sponsor. The Assembly's concurrence completed the second of two legislative passages Wisconsin's constitutional-amendment process requires before a proposed amendment can go before voters.

Because SJR53 was passed in identical form by the legislature on this second occasion, its adoption satisfied the constitutional prerequisite and automatically referred the measure to Wisconsin voters at the November 7, 2006 general election, where it appeared as Question 1. Wisconsin law at the time already statutorily barred same-sex marriage; the amendment's purpose was to entrench that exclusion, along with a ban on civil unions and similar legal statuses, in the state constitution beyond the reach of ordinary legislative repeal.

Updates

2006-11-07 — Wisconsin voters ratified Question 1, enacting the amendment as Article XIII, Section 13 [1, 2]

Wisconsin voters approved the constitutional amendment as Question 1 at the November 7, 2006 general election, by approximately a 59%–41% margin. The measure took effect as Article XIII, Section 13 of the Wisconsin Constitution, barring same-sex marriage and substantially similar legal statuses.

2014-06-06 — U.S. District Court ruled Wisconsin's same-sex marriage ban unconstitutional (Wolf v. Walker) [3, 4]

Judge Barbara Crabb of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin held in Wolf v. Walker (No. 3:14-cv-00064) that Article XIII, Section 13 violated the Fourteenth Amendment's due process and equal protection guarantees. The Seventh Circuit affirmed on September 4, 2014 (766 F.3d 648).

2015-06-26 — Obergefell v. Hodges superseded Wisconsin's same-sex marriage ban [5]

The U.S. Supreme Court held in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644, that the Fourteenth Amendment requires states to license and recognize same-sex marriages. The ruling superseded Article XIII, Section 13; it has not been enforced since but remains in the constitutional text.