Did the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage last Friday overturn Tennessee's law against parents marrying their children?
Tennessee law forbids "lineal" marriages, which are defined thus:
Marriage cannot be contracted with a lineal ancestor (parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.) or descendant (children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, etc.), nor the lineal ancestor of either parent (grandparents, great-grandparents, etc.) or descendant of either parent (brothers, sisters, half-brothers, half-sisters, nieces and nephews, grandnieces and grandnephews, etc.), nor the child of a grandparent (aunts and uncles), nor the lineal descendants of spouse (spouse's children, grandchildren, stepchildren, step-grandchildren, etc.), nor the husband or wife of a parent (stepmother, stepfather) or lineal descendent [sic]. T.C.A. ' 36-3-101.In resting upon the Equal Protection doctrine of the 14th Amendment to declare same-sex marriage valid across the 50 states, the Supreme Court's 5-4 majority expressly denied that marriages of same-sex couples valid in one state could be held invalid in another.
A marriage entered into in violation of this statute is void in Tennessee regardless of whether the marriage was entered into in Tennessee or in another state where the marriage would be valid.
A number of voices are already openly calling for legalizing polygamous marriages in the wake of the June 26 SCOTUS decision. So could Tennessee's prohibition of lineal marriage could be invalidated using the same argument as SCOTUS's majority, and citing Obergefell as precedent?