ACLU sues Nevada, Clark County over wedding laws

The ACLU claims in a lawsuit filed Sunday that Nevada and Clark County laws requiring persons who solemnize marriages to have a religious affiliation are unconstitutional.

According to Allen Lichtenstein, the longtime lead attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union in Nevada, the goal is to overturn the laws, which he said place an unlawful religious test on applicants in violation of the First and 14th amendments and equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, and additional due process protections provided for in the Nevada Constitution.

For Lichtenstein, the issue is personal. His daughter, Claire Lichtenstein, 26, put her wedding to Wesley Wertz on hold after the couple could not find a nongovernment person with no religious affiliation to perform the ceremony.

Claire Lichtenstein and Wertz are two of the five plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

Lichtenstein said he did not file the lawsuit in response to his daughter's plight. "We've been thinking about filing the lawsuit for a while," he said, noting the ACLU asked lawmakers in 2009 to remedy the allegedly flawed laws by allowing notaries public to solemnize marriages.

"They said that would create an overly burdensome bureaucracy," Lichtenstein said.

The push to change the laws was opposed by Nevada Secretary of State Ross Miller and the wedding chapel industry; both claimed it would prove too difficult to track.

"Extra paperwork really isn't a valid justification for constitutional violations," Lichtenstein said.

Joni Moss, the founder of the Nevada Wedding Association, said she wasn't necessarily opposed to changing the laws, but she said marriages have to be properly recorded. "How do you keep track of that with thousands of notaries?" she said . "The rules are very stringent for a reason."

But the rules that require nongovernmental officials who perform wedding ceremonies to be affiliated with a religion, said Lichtenstein, clearly violate the U.S. Constitution. "The Constitution says there shall be no religious test for holding public office," he said. "People who solemnize marriages are public officials because they act on behalf of the state."

The laws violate the equal protection clause, he said, because lawmakers gave notaries authority to preside over ceremonies regarding domestic partnerships.

Three other plaintiffs join Claire Lichtenstein and Wertz: Raul Martinez, described in the lawsuit as an atheist and a member of the American Humanist Association who twice has been denied a certificate allowing him to solemnize marriages; Michael Jacobson, also a humanist who has been denied a certificate; and Paula Newman, a notary public unaffiliated with any religious organization who has not applied for a certificate.

Regarding Claire Lichtenstein and Wertz, the lawsuit says, "They would like to have an outdoor secular ceremony in a romantic location of their choosing; however, because the current law grants the authority to solemnize marriages to only a handful on nonreligiously affiliated state officials, they are having extreme difficulty finding a secular individual to perform their solemnization ceremony."

The defendants are the state of Nevada, Clark County, Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, Clark County District Attorney David Roger and Clark County Clerk Diana Alba.

The lawsuit asks the federal courts to declare the state laws unconstitutional on their face and to place an injunction on lawmakers to prohibit using religious tests or criteria in issuing certificates.

Contact reporter Doug McMurdo at dmcmurdo@ reviewjournal.com or 702-224-5512.