Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 207, Section 11, more commonly known as the 1913 law, is a Massachusetts law enacted in 1913 and repealed in 2008 that invalidated the marriage of non-residents if the marriage was invalid in the state where they lived. It originated during a period of heightened antipathy to interracial marriage and went largely unenforced until used between 2004 and 2008 to deny marriage licenses to out-of-state same-sex couples.
Enactment
State Senator Harry Ney Stearns introduced Senate Bill 234 on March 7, 1913. The bill was signed into law three weeks later by Governor Eugene N. Foss. The statute provided that in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts:
No record of the state Senate debate has been found. Historians and legal scholars have said that the original purpose of the legislation was an anti-miscegenation measure. The law did not ban interracial marriage, which had been legal in Massachusetts since 1843, but blocked interracial couples from states that banned interracial marriages from marrying in Massachusetts. The law was enacted at the height of a public scandal over black heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson's interracial marriages. A 1912 conference on uniform state laws recommended the language adopted by Massachusetts because, among other things, it would enforce state prohibitions against the marriage of "a white person and a colored person." At a conference of governors in 1912 during the height of the publicity surrounding Johnson's marriages, Governor Foss of Massachusetts was one of several northern governors who endorsed the enactment of an anti-miscegenation statute. Vermont passed a similar statute about the same time as Massachusetts.
In 1912, prompted by the notoriety of Johnson's marriages, a Congressman from Georgia, Seaborn Roddenbery, proposed an anti-miscegenation amendment to the U.S. Constitution in the U.S. House of Representatives. It provided that "Intermarriage between negros or persons of color and Caucasians ... within the United States ... is forever prohibited." That amendment failed to pass, but the U.S. House did pass legislation making interracial marriage a crime in the District of Columbia. As of 1910, 60 percent of states – 28 of the 46 – had anti-miscegenation laws. Anti-miscegenation measures were introduced in 9 states in 1913 and enacted in one of them, Wyoming.
Legal challenges
Following the Supreme Judicial Court's (SJC) decision in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health (2003) as the May 17, 2004, date set for the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts approached, the state Department of Public Health (DPH) altered its marriage license form, Notice of Intention of Marriage, to ask applicants where they intended to reside once married, citing the 1913 law in the form's instructions to clerks. Even before the first same-sex marriages occurred, the 1913 was a focus of debate and national press coverage. Governor Romney took the position that "Massachusetts should not become the Las Vegas of same-sex marriage".
Clerks in some localities, including Somerville, Worcester and Provincetown, ignored the DPH instructions and granted marriage licenses to same-sex couples that the 1913 law excluded, prompting Governor Romney to call for stricter enforcement and for those marriages not to be registered on the state's public health records. His position was that same-sex couples were only entitled to licenses if they intended to reside in Massachusetts. He said: "What next, is Provincetown going to start marrying 10-year-olds in violation of the law. ... Are they going to refuse to enforce the drug laws? Will they ignore the gun laws, too?" Attorney General Tom Reilly ordered the clerks to follow the guidelines issued by the Department of Public Health.