The government accepted that the law as it currently stands is indeed discriminatory, but argued that they should be allowed more time to consider how to deal with and eliminate the discrimination. Instead they wanted to be able to enter into a civil partnership. The case was brought by a different-sex couple, Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, who didn’t want to marry because they considered that marriage had negative connotations for the role of women. The question before the courts was whether this was discriminatory and contrary to the rights in the ECHR. So the legal position is clearly different. This left the legal position as follows: couples of the same sex had the option of entering into either a civil partnership or a marriage, whereas couples of a different sex to each other only had the option to marry. This changed with the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 which provided for marriage to be available to couples of the same sex. At that time, same-sex partners were not able to marry under English law. The Civil Partnerships Act 2004 was introduced to allow same-sex couples to enter into a legally binding civil partnership, which gave them some, but not all, of the rights that different-sex partners could obtain through marriage. In R (on the application of Steinfeld and Keidan) v Secretary of State for International Development UKSC 32, the Court said that the fact that different-sex couples could not enter into civil partnerships breached their rights under Article 14 (non-discrimination) when read with Article 8 (respect for private life). In June 2018, the UK Supreme Court made a somewhat rare declaration of incompatibility under the Human Rights Act 1998, finding that the Civil Partnerships Act 2004 is incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights. This post has been contributed by Charlotte Crilly, Teaching Fellow for Undergraduate Laws.
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March 2023
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