ADF: Federal court right to uphold Puerto Rico's freedom to preserve marriage
The following quote may be attributed to Alliance Defending Freedom Litigation Counsel Caleb Dalton regarding the decision of the U.S. District Court for the District of Puerto Rico in Conde-Vidal v. Garcia-Padilla to reject a challenge to Puerto Rico’s laws defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman:“The people of Puerto Rico – and the people of every U.S. state and territory – should be free to affirm marriage as the union of a man and a woman. The district court in this case was right to conclude, as the U.S. Supreme Court recognized in its Windsor decision last year and in its previous Baker decision, that marriage law is the business of the states. Echoing last month’s decision from a Louisiana federal district court that affirmed the states’ authority over the definition of marriage, the court in Puerto Rico said that ‘[i]t takes inexplicable contortions of the mind or perhaps even willful ignorance…to interpret Windsor’s endorsement of the state control of marriage as eliminating the state control of marriage.’”
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ABOUT Caleb Dalton
Caleb Dalton serves as senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom's Center for Life, where he brings over a decade of civil rights litigation and public advocacy experience to the team, securing the rights of the unborn and those who advocate for them. Since joining ADF, Dalton has served on multiple teams representing private individuals and government entities to affirm the fundamental freedoms of speech and religious liberty. With ADF's Center for Conscience Initiatives, he played a key role in the successful petition for certiorari in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission at the U.S. Supreme Court. With the Center for Academic Freedom, he successfully represented students and faculty seeking to speak freely on public university campuses across the country. Dalton earned a J.D. at the Regent University School of Law, graduating cum laude. He is a member of the bar in Arizona, Virginia, and the District of Columbia; he is also admitted to practice before multiple federal district and appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court.