Senior Counsel for the plaintiffs, Michael Collins, will present the opening address before Judge Elizabeth Dunne. He will set out that the couple are asking for equality and fairness and to be treated the same as other married couples in Ireland.
Drs Zappone and Gilligan will seek various remedies before the High Court. In particular, they will seek a declaration that in failing to recognise their Canadian marriage, and in failing to apply the tax law provisions relating to married couples to them as a married couple, the State and the Revenue Commissioners have acted unlawfully, in breach of their constitutional rights to equality, to marriage, to property rights and family rights and in breach of their rights to privacy, marriage and non-discrimination under the European Convention on Human Rights.
“This case is fundamentally about rights and equality,” said Ailbhe Smyth, Chair of the National Lesbian and Gay Federation and KAL Advocacy Initiative supporter. “When our laws deny the equal rights of all individuals to make life-long commitments of intimacy and dependency that are actually recognised and supported by law, they discriminate and exclude.”
Smyth also called upon members of Dáil Eireann to introduce legislation which will allow all citizens of Ireland to enter into a civil marriage if they choose to, stressing that legislators have the power to short-cut the judicial process.
“As representatives of all citizens of Ireland you have an opportunity to introduce legislation which fully commits Ireland to equality for all. Critically, we are asking you to act now - not in the next Dáil term, not after the votes for the next election are safe, not after the judiciary has considered the matter,” she said.
The KAL Case arose after Dr Zappone and Dr Gilligan married in Vancouver, Canada on 13 September 2003.
On 1 July 2004, the Revenue refused the couple’s claim for the same allowances as a married couple under the Irish Taxes Consolidation Acts. The Revenue argued that married couples related only to “a husband” and “a wife”, and that the Oxford English dictionary defined these as a married man and a married woman.
The case is expected to run for three weeks.
Similar legal challenges to
discriminatory marriage laws
continue or are expected in other
countries including the United
Kingdom, New Zealand, Hong Kong and
Israel.
USI HOLDS A PUBLIC CELEBRATION OF EQUAL MARRIAGE RIGHTS
The Union of Students in Ireland (USI) staged a public celebration proclaiming the human right to marry to coincide with the first day of the High Court case brought by Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan seeking recognition of their legal Canadian marriage.
Students representing gay and lesbian couples – and their supporters – gathered in Dublin’s Grafton Street to highlight their expectation of equal marriage rights for all.
Equal marriage rights for same-sex and opposite-sex couples are now recognised by a growing number of EU and non-EU countries.
USI gay and lesbian spokesperson Steve Conlon said: “Students are celebrating the fact that everyone possesses equal marriage rights as a human right laid out in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Denial of a human right brings misery to gay and lesbian people, so students expect the Irish government to recognise the human right of all people to marry.”
USI President Colm Hamrogue said: “Civil unions are different from marriage, but the whole point of human rights is that they are the same for every person. This is why civil unions do not suffice as an equivalent to marriage equality.
“Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands all recognise equal marriage rights as a human right for same-sex and opposite-sex couples.
“Students look forward to the Irish Government putting equality at the heart of marriage law reform here in Ireland.”