Mexico’s Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling Wednesday afternoon that paves the way to universal marriage rights in the country.
The court ruled on behalf of three same-sex couple seeking to marry in the southern state of Oaxaca and struck down an Oaxaca state law that declares that “one of the purposes of marriage is the perpetuation of the species.”
The court said in its ruling that to condition marriages to the union of one man and one woman “violates the principle of equality.”
The court had already ruled in 2010 that gay marriages performed under a Mexico City ordinance had to be recognized nationwide. With this precedent, the remaining bans on gay marriage in most Mexican states could quickly fall.
This ruling does not immediately eliminate marriage statutes limiting unions to a man and a woman—the Mexican Supreme Court doesn’t have the power to strike down state laws like that en mass as the United States Supreme Court does. But the lawyer who brought the case, Alex Alí Méndez Díaz, said before the ruling that victory would mean the beginning of the end for bans on same-sex marriage.
To have binding precedent on all federal courts in Mexico there must be five continuous decisions in the same direction. So, after the Oaxaca decisions two are still missing. If they come, which they no doubt will, a nationwide principle is established.
