Steinfeld & Anor v Secretary of State for Education

Judgment

LADY JUSTICE ARDEN :

background to this appeal

The bar on civil partnership for opposite-sex couples

The Civil Partnership Act 2004 (“the CPA”) created the civil partnership (“CP”), which is a means whereby same-sex partners can obtain formal legal recognition of their relationship outside marriage. A CP has substantially the same legal incidents as marriage except for the name. More recently, the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 (“the 2013 Act”) has been passed which enables same-sex couples the alternative option of entering into marriage.

There is, however, a bar (“the bar”) on opposite-sex couples entering into a CP (section 3(1)(a) of the CPA). So same-sex couples have two options for obtaining legal recognition of their relationship whereas opposite-sex couples have only one.

The Government’s position on the future of CPs

Since same-sex marriage was introduced, the number of new CP formations has gone down, and the number of CP dissolutions has gone up. The government’s position as explained by Mr Dan Squires QC, for the Secretary of State, is that:

A decision has been taken by the Government, following two public consultations and debate in Parliament, not at this stage to seek to persuade Parliament to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, abolish them or phase them out. Instead it has decided to wait to see how extending marriage to same-sex couples (made possible by the [2013 Act]) impacts on civil partnerships before making a final decision as to their future.

Consultations and statistics

The Secretary of State has filed evidence about two recent public consultations concerning the future of civil partnerships, and provided us with evidence in the form of official statistics about the use of CPs since the 2013 Act came into force. I have summarised the key parts of this evidence in the Appendix to this judgment.

Appellants’ reasons for preferring CP to marriage

The appellants, Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, are a young couple in a committed long-term relationship. They wish to formalise their relationship, but they have deep-rooted and genuine ideological objections to marriage based upon what they consider to be its historically patriarchal nature. They consider that the status of civil partnership would reflect their values and give due recognition to the equal nature of their relationship. Ms Steinfeld and Mr Keidan in good faith consider that marriage does not reflect the way in which they under