Ten years after Obergefell v. Hodges, marriage remains out of reach for millions of people with disabilities. Although explicit bans on interracial and same-sex marriage have fallen, disabled people continue to face a complex web of exclusion operating simultaneously across legal, economic, institutional, and cultural domains. Guardianship laws strip away the right to choose a spouse. Benefit programs impose crushing marriage penalties, forcing impossible choices between love and survival. Institutional policies discourage or prohibit relationship formation. Cultural narratives render disabled people invisible as partners, spouses, and parents. Together, these barriers make marriage practically unattainable, exposing society’s ongoing refusal to recognize disabled people’s full humanity, autonomy, and citizenship.
This systematic exclusion represents not only a profound social injustice but also a constitutional failure. Commitments to liberty and equality ring hollow when fundamental rights exist only on paper. True marriage equality requires more than the removal of formal prohibitions; it demands the dismantling of the interlocking obstacles that render constitutional protections theoretical for disabled people. This Article argues that piecemeal reforms cannot repair a system designed to exclude. Only a comprehensive strategy, combining constitutional litigation, robust federal and state reforms, and cultural transformation, can achieve the immediate and thorough redress that justice requires.
