Most of the big decisions that have come down regarding marriage in various forms and the legal intricacies involved with these relationships have shown up in the Supreme Court or at least one of the appellate courts. Among the most famous was Obergefell v Hodges, which recognized gay marriages as legal unions. But a decision in a very different court recently might deliver an even bigger shake-up to our traditional views of marriage. After Obergefell, a marriage could be recognized as a union between a man and a woman, two men, or two women. But it was always a union between two people. Now, New York City’s eviction court (yes… the eviction court) has delivered a ruling suggesting that marriages may not have to be limited to just two people.

The case in question is West 49th St., LLC v. O’Neill. It centers around three men. Two of them, Scott Anderson and Markyus O’Neill, shared an apartment in New York City, with the lease being in the name of Anderson. But Anderson was also married to another man, Robert Romano, who did not share the apartment with them. Sadly, Mr. Anderson passed away and Mr. O’Neill wanted to assume the lease, but the building owner refused, saying that he had no legal right to the property being essentially “just a roommate.” O’Neill took the owner to court and the judge in the case did not issue a final ruling, but ordered the case held over to determine if all three of the men were in a relationship. If so, then O’Neill might prevail. But rather than being a simple case of determining who does or does not control the lease, this could be the first case where the courts have recognized a relationship involving more than two people where all of them could have legal rights that are intertwined in the same fashion as traditional two-person couples. (LGBTQ Nation)

The judge cited legislation enacted since the advent of federally recognized same sex unions. “In February 2020, the Utah legislature passed a so-called Bigamy Bill, decriminalizing the offense by downgrading it from a felony to a misdemeanor. In June [2020], Somerville, Massachusetts, passed an ordinance allowing groups of three or more people who ‘consider themselves to be a family’ to be recognized as domestic partners. The neighboring town of Cambridge followed suit, passing a broader ordinance recognizing multi-partner relationships. The law has proceeded even more rapidly in recognizing that it is possible for a child to have more than two legal parents.”

“Why then,” posited the judge, “except for the very real possibility of implicit majoritarian animus, is the limitation of two persons inserted into the definition of a family-like relationship for the purposes of receiving the same protections from eviction accorded to legally formalized or blood relationships? Is ‘two’ a ‘code word’ for monogamy? Why does a person have to be committed to one other person in only certain prescribed ways in order to enjoy stability in housing after the departure of a loved one?”

On the surface, we might write this off as a simple dispute involving someone trying to hang on to a rent-controlled apartment in Manhattan by whatever means necessary. (And that’s a valuable commodity indeed.) And perhaps that’s all it will turn out to be. We have no way of knowing if Anderson and O’Neill were in a relationship or why Anderson’s husband was living elsewhere. But it certainly sounds as if Robert Romano could settle the issue easily enough. Surely he would have known if he was in a three-way relationship or not. If he says that he was not involved with O’Neill and he and his former partner were separated, the case is likely at an end.

But if they can demonstrate that such a relationship was taking place, perhaps if he was living elsewhere simply for work reasons or convenience, then the court may find that all three members of the relationship would enjoy the same legal associations that married or otherwise committed couples involving two people generally do. So is this a positive development or a negative one?

Those who have followed my work for some time are aware of the positions I took back when Obergefell was being debated. I still don’t believe that the government should be in the marriage business beyond ensuring that marriage isn’t used as a fig leaf to cover pedophilia or the abuse of those incapable of providing informed consent. Now I find myself hard-pressed to say why it should suddenly become the government’s business again if two people want to add a third person who is equally capable of granting consent into the mix. Granted, I find the idea personally offputting (and I have more than enough trouble trying to take care of one woman, even as wonderful as she is) but how others handle their own relationships is up to them.

It would be somewhat ironic if the case that decides the issue of how many people can be in a marriage arrived at the Supreme Court after starting in an eviction court with a fight over the occupancy of a rent-controlled apartment. But we’re living in increasingly strange times, so I suppose nothing should shock us all that much anymore.