Supreme Court of Ohio Board of Professional Conduct issues advisory opinion imposing duty on judges to perform same-sex marriages

The Board of Professional Conduct for Ohio lawyers and judges has issued an advisory opinion interpreting the relevant authorities within the Board's authority to prohibit judges from refusing to perform marriages for same-sex couples.

The weakness of the opinion's reasoning is evident near the outset, starting with the paragraph purporting to bring the issues addressed within the Board's jurisdiction:

In Ohio, municipal, county, and probate judges are specifically authorized by statute to perform civil marriage ceremonies. R.C. 1907.18(C), 1901.14(A)(1), 2101.27, and 3101.08. Whether judges are mandated or authorized by the Ohio Revised Code to perform civil marriages is a legal question and beyond the scope of the advisory opinion authority granted to the Board by the Supreme Court of Ohio. Gov. Bar R. V, Section 2(D), BPC Reg. 15(B)(1). 1 However, the General Assembly has granted judges the authority to perform marriages because of the unique public office that they hold. When a judge performs a civil marriage ceremony, the Board concludes that the judge is performing a judicial duty and thus is required to follow the Code of Judicial Conduct in the performance of that duty.

Notice how this trades on different meanings of "judicial duty" at different times. It starts by saying that judges are "authorized" by Ohio statute law to perform marriages. It then disclaims authority to decide whether Ohio statute law actually mandates judges to perform marriages, or instead simply authorizes them to do so (the position staked out in the first sentence). The opinion then says that Ohio statute law grants judges authority to perform civil marriages "because of the unique public office that they hold." And then the opinion brings the decision whether to perform a civil marriage within the scope of the Code of Judicial Conduct by asserting that the judge is performing a judicial duty when a judge performs a civil marriage ceremony. Notice, though, that these are two different moments in time. The decision whether to perform a civil marriage ceremony precedes the performance of a civil marriage ceremony. Although the opinion disclaims authority to decide whether judges are mandated or merely authorized to perform any marriages, the opinion ends up determining the judges are, indeed, mandated to perform certain marriages. 

And this is just the beginning of the opinion. It gets worse when it goes far beyond the holding of Obergefell in concluding, for example, that "[a] judge may reasonably be perceived as having a personal bias or prejudice based on sexual orientation if he or she elects to perform opposite-sex marriages, but declines to perform same-sex marriages."

The opinion also reflects ignorance of the actual role of public opinion in the creation of new constitutional law these days when it brings in the requirement that judges "apply the law without regard to whether the law is 'popular or unpopular with the public, the media, government officials, or the judge’s friends or family.'" Can anyone say with a straight face that Justice Kennedy, the author of Obergefell v. Hodges, himself applied the law without regard to all these factors? Aside from judges' personal, moral, or religious beliefs about marriage, one good legal reason to avoid extending Obergefell beyond its holding is precisely to limit the damage done to the law when judges shape it to better conform with changed public opinion, as Justice Kennedy and his colleagues in the majority did in Obergefell.