Johno Espejo (left) and Matthew Mansell, a plaintiff couple in the marriage equality case, being interviewed outside the Supreme Court.
For Matthew Mansell, one half of a plaintiff couple in Tuesday's same-sex marriage cases, he will never forget walking into the Supreme Court as the court watchers, attorneys and reporters looked on.
"It just seemed like all eyes were on us," said Mansell, who was walking alongside his husband Johno Espejo. "It was just awe-inspiring to think that people are staring at us and we're the ones who are involved in this case."
It was Mansell's first trip to the Supreme Court. But below are a few reflections from Jenny Pizer, director of Lambda Legal's Law and Policy Project, and Evan Wolfson, executive director of the Freedom to Marry, both of whom have been part of the marriage equality movement for decades and also attended the Supreme Court arguments on the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013.
To Pizer, it felt like the entire marriage movement had relocated to Washington. Waiting in line outside the courthouse to secure a good seat was like "a nonstop series of happy reunions" of people who have worked toward the same goal from different parts of the country.
But when the opponents of marriage equality arrived, Pizer said it was a very different story.
"This morning, when the antis showed up, the signs got bigger and their numbers had gotten smaller. They amplified their volume not by having lots of people, but by having a tiny number of people and megaphones."
Inside the courtroom, Pizer was initially taken aback by the line of questioning from some of the more liberal justices. In particular, Justice Stephen Breyer queried the proponents' lawyer, Mary Bonauto, about whether the question of marriage bans should be left to state voters. Pizer recalls:
"We went in thinking, 'We've seen these issues argued before, and the decisions tell us something about how each of these justices think about some of these issues, at least.' But at the beginning, the questioning was vigorous enough and the unexpected intensity of it ... raised the question of, 'Well, have we been wrong about what we understood about the jurisprudence of some of the justices?' I don't take anything for granted with any case and certainly not a case of this magnitude."
For more courtroom takeaways, head below the fold.
Pizer was not the only court watcher to take note of the rigor of Breyer's examination.
Per prelim reports coming from #SCOTUS, biggest surprise so far has been Breyer's questions to Bonauto re: leaving #ssm bans to state voters
— @victoriakwan_
But
Scotusblog's Eric Citron said he did not find Justice Breyer's line of inquiry all that telling.
"He was strongly encouraging the petitioner to answer a question OTHER Justices had been posing. No doubt Justice Breyer himself was interested in whether the Court should be the one who decides the question at issue, or the voters instead, but he also wanted the petitioners to get their views out for other Justices as well."
By the end of the arguments, both Pizer and Wolfson felt the justices were growing tired of the responses offered by the lawyer arguing on behalf of the opponents of same-sex marriage, John Bursch. Here's Pizer:
"There was some testiness to questions that, to me, revealed probably exasperation at the insufficiency of the some the answers. Justices Kagan and Sotomayor and Breyer said, rather directly, that doesn't make any sense."
Wolfson suggested the exasperation may have extended beyond the four liberal justices, sometimes becoming evident in Chief Justice John Roberts and others.
"Even a couple of the other justices expressed surprise that the state was digging on things that just can't be true. It can't be true, (for instance), that the only marriages the state values are procreative marriages; or that the only way to herd children into connections with their families is to deny the connection that gay people have with their kids; or that only biological parenting matters. These are the things the state is forced to say in order to come up with an argument and I don't think it resonated well, particularly the longer it went on."
Wolfson was also struck by the contrast of the "theoretical" arguments advanced by the opponents of same-sex marriage versus the depth of the real-world impact for same-sex couples and the reasons they want to marry.
While neither Wolfson nor Pizer is counting any chickens, Wolfson said the momentum of the marriage equality movement heading into the day was palpable.
"We all do get caught up in the drama of the day of arguments, but really what counts and what I believe will now really resonate with the justices, is the collective presentation we all made to the country and to the courts and to this court going into the arguments. It's the energy everyone can feel of the 65 court rulings we've racked up, the majority we've built, the people whose hearts and minds we've changed. All of that is what now goes into the justices' thinking alongside the really terrific and compelling briefs. All of that is going to weigh much more with the justices than today's moment of crystallization."
5:10 PM PT: For anyone interested in more specifics on the arguments in the court, I posted an earlier piece here.