The New Jersey Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday ordering that state’s legislature to offer gays the benefits of marriage, either via civil unions or same-sex marriage, may not lead to a flood of New Yorkers crossing the Hudson River, but it could have a profound effect on the New York state Legislature’s approach to gay unions.
“I think it does mean something for New York,” said Roberta Kaplan, the Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison partner who argued in favor of same-sex marriage last May before the New York Court of Appeals in the joined cases known as Hernandez v. Robles, 86. “It’s not irrelevant that nearly every state that shares a border with New York — Connecticut, Vermont, Massachusetts, and now New Jersey — allows for in some measure, either by court ruling or legislative act, statewide recognition of same-sex families.”
