Holding that the state statute banning same sex marriage violates the Connecticut constitution, the Connecticut Supreme Court, in Kerrigan v. Commissioner of Public Health, ruled that: "Interpreting our state constitutional provisions in accordance with firmly established equal protection principles leads inevitably to the conclusion that gay persons are entitled to marry the otherwise qualified same sex partner of their choice. To decide otherwise would require us to apply one set of constitutional principles to gay persons and another to all others."
Emanuel Margolis and Mary-Kate Smith of Wofsey, Rosen, Kweskin and Kuriansky, LLP authored, along with three distinguished law professors, an Amicus Brief filed on the behalf of the plaintiffs, eight same sex couples who had applied for but were denied marriage licenses by the town of Madison. In their brief, they successfully argued that excluding qualified same sex couples from marriage violates the guarantees of equal protection of the Connecticut Constitution and that the state cannot remedy the discriminatory exclusion by creating a separate institution exclusively for same sex couples.
Margolis and Smith represented various individuals and organizations including, among others, Senator Lowell Weicker, Drew S. Days, III, Harlon Dalton, Connecticut Women's Education and Legal Fund, Love Makes a Family, the National Association of Women Lawyers, the National Council of Jewish Women, Inc., and the Southern Poverty Law Center.
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