How the historic fight for marriage equality came together in Tennessee 10 years ago

USA Today

5 hours ago

"It was a surreal experience," said Bill Harbison, one of the Nashville lawyers in the Supreme Court case.
The world was swirling around Thomas Kostura 10 years ago.
Kostura, whose New York marriage had not been recognized when his husband was stationed in Tennessee, was in the middle of the most important U.S. Supreme Court case for gay rights in the country's history.
'It was basically this hurricane going on around us, and we were kind of in the eye of the storm,' he said. 'It was a whirlwind.'
On June 26, 2015, the nation's highest court legalized marriage equality nationwide, proclaiming that the Constitution grants same-sex couples the right to marry.
Tennessee was at the center of it all.
How Tennessee wound up in the fight for gay marriage
The landmark case featured plaintiffs from four different states, one of which was Tennessee. The success of Tennessee's case came from strategy and a little luck.
Abby Rubenfeld, a prolific civil rights attorney in Nashville who has fought for the LGBTQ+ community for decades, was the architect of the case.
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It started after another state passed a law protecting marriage equality, Rubenfeld said. She remembers a reporter calling to ask if there would be a challenge to Tennessee's law restricting marriage to a man and a woman.
Without thinking much of it, Rubenfeld said, 'Hell yes!'
University of Tennessee College of Law professor Regina Hillman saw the story. Hillman called Rubenfeld and said she wanted in, and the case was in motion.
They needed a few things.
One was an advocacy organization's backing. Rubenfeld, a member of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, secured its support.
They also needed the resources of a big law firm. In Knoxville, a boyfriend of one of Hillman's students overheard her discussing with Rubenfeld who might be a good fit. The young man said, "My dad will do it," Rubenfeld said.
'And we were like, 'Shut up,'' Rubenfeld said. 'Then finally I was like, 'Who's your dad?'"
Bill Harbison, he said.
'Oh my God! Are you kidding?' Rubenfeld remembers saying. "Because at the time, Bill was president-elect of the Tennessee Bar Association, he was at a well-respected firm. He was kind of perfect."
'Necessary for me to step up'
The lawyers put out advertisements with LGBTQ+ rights groups to find plaintiffs and ended up with three couples.
Matthew Mansell and Johno Espejo, whose marriage in San Francisco was not recognized in Nashville, was one of them. Mansell said he just wanted the law to treat him as it treated his straight family members and 'felt that it was necessary for me to step up.'
'I was very angry that my marriage was not recognized in all states,' Mansell said.
Kostura and his husband, Ijpe Dekoe, were with a group of friends at dinner in Memphis when they first considered joining. Their friends pitched them the idea.
'It takes like 10 years to get to the Supreme Court,' Kostura remembers thinking. Why not? He knew other cases for marriage equality were happening around the country. 'Someone's going to get there before us,' he thought.
Rubenfeld said the key plaintiffs were Sophia Jesty and Valeria Tanco, a lesbian couple who worked at the University of Tennessee veterinary school. One of them was pregnant, and they wanted to get both their names on the birth certificate.
They sued in October 2013 and needed a decision quickly. The baby was due in March.
Case works its way to Supreme Court
Judge Aleta Trauger ruled in their favor a day before the baby was due, Rubenfeld said.
The state of Tennessee appealed the decision to the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, where the case was combined with others from Michigan, Ohio and Kentucky. This time, the states won.
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'When we lost, everybody in the gay rights movement like rejoiced,' Rubenfeld said.
Until then, every circuit court that had taken up a marriage equality case had decided in its favor. Without a loss, the Supreme Court probably wouldn't have felt it necessary to rule, Rubenfeld said.
The plaintiffs appealed. When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, Harbison immediately called Rubenfeld.
'It was almost a surreal experience,' Harbison said.
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When the case was argued at the Supreme Court, Harbison remembers, Rubenfeld would occasionally remind him of the massive moment they were in the middle of.
'We're making history,' he remembers her saying.
'Representing millions' a burden but reason to stay courageous
As the case was growing, so was the burden on its plaintiffs.
It had been just 15 months between when the lawsuit was filed in district court and when it was accepted at the Supreme Court. The gravity of the situation caught up to Kostura.
'All of a sudden I realized that I'm representing millions of people,' Kostura said. It was more responsibility than he'd ever had.
He remembers being recognized in public for the first time, by a waitress who saw his name on his debit card..
"I hope you guys win," she told him.
It made him feel the weight of his role but also gave the courage to get through it, he said.
He leaned on his friends — those 'who can make a good martini,' he said — as well as his attorneys. They insulated him from the frenzy that surrounded the case. They were like a 'suit of armor,' he said.
Ruling 'hit us in the stomach'
Mansell was getting ready for work when he saw the decision on the news. He immediately called out sick. A circus of media attention, interviews and photographs came. He was flown out to the gay pride parade in San Francisco.
Kostura was getting a haircut at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey.
'I tried not to jump because the barber had the clippers up against my head,' he said.
For him and Dekoe, the ruling precipitated an emotional release he had not been fully expecting. To get through it, you have to convince yourself you're going to win, Kostura said, and doing that had taken an emotional toll without him realizing.
'It hit us in the stomach,' he said.
Rubenfeld was in the late Judge Phil Smith's courtroom when the decision came down. She went into the jury room with her daughter, then a student at Middle Tennessee State Univerisity, and checked SCOTUSblog.
'I jumped up and hugged her and ran in the courtroom, didn't even look if Judge Smith was on the bench, and just blurted out — 'We won! We won marriage equality!'' Rubenfeld said. 'And people cheered! In Nashville, Tennessee, people clapped and were happy, which meant a lot.'
Harbison was walking out of Chancery Court when he ran into a lawyer on the back steps who told him the news. He got together with Rubenfeld and as many people on the legal team they could gather, and got lunch at J. Alexanders, and 'the rest of the day is kind of a blur.'
'We did a lot of drinking that day,' Rubenfeld said, laughing.
Couples 'dancing with joy' to marry
As others partied, Chris Sanders had his nose in his laptop.
The Tennessee Equality Project had organized a massive campaign to see which county clerk's offices were making the changes necessary to marry same sex couples. They had volunteers and staff in every courthouse in the state.
'I was dug in at my laptop hours and hours and hours while people were scurrying around clerk's offices in East, West and Middle Tennessee,' Sanders said. 'And I will never forget getting those reports — just a constant screen, county by county by county.'
In Davidson County, one of the quickest in the state, the first same-sex couple married was Nikki Von Haeger and her then-fiancée.
They didn't plan to be.
Here's how she remembers the decision to get married that morning going: 'Do you want to just, should we go? Should we just go down to the courthouse?' she remembers asking her fiancée. They had been engaged for about a year at that point and following the case on SCOTUSblog. She expected a line down the street, but they happened to be the first ones out.
Megan Barry, then a mayoral candidate, was down there ready to officiate anyone who walked through the courthouse doors.
'She married us, and it was the strangest, one of the strangest moments of my life, because afterward, we went and got barbecue and did laundry,' Von Haeger said. 'And then all of a sudden it was blowing up everywhere.'
Dozens of other same-sex couples also came to the courthouse that day.
'What struck me so much was just the volume of people who showed up, who were finally able to avail themselves of this fundamental right that had been denied,' Barry said. 'They were practically dancing with joy and happiness.'
Von Haeger and her ex-wife have since divorced, but the day remains a good memory, she said.
'And not just for marrying somebody that I was in love with,' she said. 'But also having the choice and the freedom to do so, which … for a while there I didn't think was going to happen.'
'We made it through that together'
Ten years after the ruling, all the Tennessee plaintiffs in the case have moved away.
Mansell and Espejo live in Southern California, where Mansell works as a conflicts analyst for a law firm. Kostura, an operations manager for an art company, lives in Washington, D.C., with Dekoe, who retired from the military and works in contracting.
Both Harbison and Rubenfeld said they consider it the proudest moment of their careers. And for Rubenfeld, who has tirelessly chipped away and struck down laws oppressive to LGBTQ+ people for decades, the decision was especially meaningful.
'I felt like I was channeling all my colleagues from the gay rights movement, especially all the gay male attorneys who passed away during AIDS, because it kind of decimated our ranks of gay and lesbian attorneys in the '80s,' she said. 'I feel like I was channeling all of them, and they were all getting to participate through me."