Zablocki v. Redhail
The Court struck down a Wisconsin law that blocked people who owed child support to a prior child from marrying anyone, anywhere, unless a court first found they had paid up and their children would not need public assistance.
Because marriage is a fundamental personal right, the Court said Wisconsin could not flatly bar people from marrying just because they had fallen behind on child support, especially since the law offered no exception for those too poor to pay.
“When a statutory classification significantly interferes with the exercise of a fundamental right, it cannot be upheld unless it is supported by sufficiently important state interests and is closely tailored to effectuate only those interests.”
The core legal test the Court used to strike down Wisconsin's marriage restriction.
How it got here: A three-judge federal district court in Wisconsin ruled the statute unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause and blocked its enforcement; the county clerk appealed directly to the Supreme Court.
The Case in Depth
What happened
Roger Redhail was ordered as a teenager to pay child support for a daughter born out of wedlock. He fell behind on payments while unemployed, and his daughter received public assistance. When he later applied for a marriage license in Wisconsin, the county clerk denied it because a state law required a court order confirming he had met his support obligations and that his child would not become a public charge — something he could not show.
The question before the Court
Could Wisconsin refuse to let people marry if they owed child support from an earlier relationship and hadn't paid it off?
Why it matters
People struggling financially, especially low-income noncustodial parents, could no longer be denied a marriage license simply because they had unpaid child support debts. States retained other tools, like wage garnishment and contempt proceedings, to collect support, but could not use marriage itself as leverage against parents who could not afford to pay.
What changes now
The ruling is final on the merits and leaves the district court's injunction against enforcing the Wisconsin statute in place. Wisconsin had already replaced the law with a narrower successor provision set to take effect shortly after the decision, and the Court noted it was not passing judgment on that new law's constitutionality, leaving that question open for future litigation.
What this does not decide
The Court made clear it was not saying every state rule touching marriage needs strict scrutiny — reasonable regulations that don't significantly interfere with the decision to marry, like age requirements or blood tests, remain valid. The ruling targets only laws that impose a serious, direct barrier to marrying, not ordinary marriage regulation.
Concurrences and dissents
Concurrence — Justice Burger
The Chief Justice joined the majority opinion in full but wrote separately to respond to Justice Stevens, arguing that the majority's reasoning was consistent with the Court's earlier unanimous ruling in Califano v. Jobst because the Wisconsin law, unlike the Social Security provision in Jobst, intentionally and substantially interfered with the right to marry.
Concurrence — Justice Stewart
Justice Stewart rejected the majority's equal protection reasoning, arguing equal protection concerns discriminatory classifications, not substantive liberty. He would have struck the law under the Due Process Clause instead, reasoning that Wisconsin could regulate marriage but could not deny it altogether to those too poor to pay support, since punishing inability to pay violates due process principles established in cases like Boddie v. Connecticut.
Concurrence — Justice Powell
Justice Powell agreed the law was unconstitutional but thought the majority's rule swept too broadly by suggesting all directly interfering marriage regulations need strict scrutiny. He would have upheld conditioning marriage on paying support for those who could afford it, objecting only to the law's total failure to exempt the truly indigent.
Concurrence — Justice Stevens
Justice Stevens focused on the law's discrimination based on wealth, arguing it let rich noncustodial parents marry while barring poor ones who had equally met their support obligations, and criticized it as an irrational, gender-biased, and poorly targeted way to address child welfare concerns.
Dissent — Justice Rehnquist
“I would view this legislative judgment in the light of the traditional presumption of validity.”Rehnquist's argument that the law deserved only lenient rational-basis review.
Justice Rehnquist argued marriage should not automatically trigger strict scrutiny and that the law easily passed rational-basis review as a reasonable way to fund child support and reduce welfare costs. He also argued Redhail had not shown he was still indigent by the time of trial, so he lacked standing to challenge the law as applied to the truly poor.
How the Court got there
The legal reasoning, step by step
- The Court applied 'critical examination,' a heightened equal protection test used when a law significantly interferes with a fundamental right, because it found that the right to marry counts as one of those fundamental rights protected by the Constitution.
- Under this test, a law that significantly burdens the right to marry can survive only if it serves sufficiently important state interests and is closely tailored so that it restricts no more than necessary to achieve those interests.
- The Court examined Wisconsin's stated goals — counseling applicants about their support duties and protecting the welfare of children not in the applicant's custody — and found the law did not actually require or provide any counseling at all.
- The Court also rejected Wisconsin's argument that denying marriage licenses served as a useful way to pressure people into paying support, noting the state already had wage garnishment, contempt proceedings, and criminal penalties to collect support without touching the right to marry.
- The Court found the law both too broad and too narrow: it did nothing to stop people from taking on other financial obligations besides marriage, and it could end up producing more children born out of wedlock by preventing marriages rather than encouraging responsibility.
- Because the law's restrictions were not closely tailored to the interests Wisconsin claimed to be protecting, the classification could not survive the heightened scrutiny required for a law burdening a fundamental right.
Doctrinal impact
Cases affected by this decision
Reaffirms Loving v. Virginia (388 U.S. 1)
Relied on as the leading precedent establishing marriage as a fundamental constitutional right.