Civil partnerships available to heterosexual couples

The Supreme Court has ruled that heterosexual couples should also be able to have civil partnerships, after a long campaign by a couple who did not want to get married.

In a unanimous decision, Lord Kerr said that when parliament introduced same-sex marriage in 2014, they “consciously decided” not to abolish same-sex civil partnerships or extend them to different-sex couples.

He added that this was despite it being “recognised at the time” to be unequal, meaning people would be treated differently depending on the gender of their partner.

Campaigners Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan brought the case to the Supreme Court arguing that their inability, as an opposite-sex couple, to enter into a civil partnership was a breach of their Article 8 rights to family and private life under the Human Rights Convention.

Read the full article in RightsInfo here: https://rightsinfo.org/supreme-court-civil-partnerships-all/