by Following up on a story we covered last May, a couple that was declined an occupancy permit because they were not married has decided to sue. The grounds? Rules prohibiting couples from living together are unconstitutional.
The lawsuit in Missouri comes after a North Carolina judge ruled last month that a 201-year-old law there barring unmarried couples from living together was unconstitutional.
I don’t know where in the Constitution they are getting this idea. My reading of the Constitution does not have any comments about who can and cannot live in the same house. I know that when I took out a mortgage on my house I was asked if it was going to be a rental property and I could not discriminate based on sex, religion, or creed. Is that what they’re referring to? Certainly there was nothing in there about not discriminating based on marital status.
Personally, I think this couple is all wet in regards to this fight, and I hope they lose. I mean, a location should be able to set up its own laws. Now, if Lawrence vs. Texas has changed all that (the law about whether or not the government can “monitor what goes on in your bedrooms”) I still wouldn’t see how that applies to marital status. There’s laws on the books that have to deal with trying to stop brothels from forming and once you cannot control occupancy in this one case, it will open it for a whole slew of other cases.
I still stand by my original assessment– why doesn’t the couple just get married?! Unless, of course, there are grander and more nefarious things at work here.
