On January 20, 2006, Baltimore circuit court Judge M. Brooke Murdock struck down the Maryland statute which had explicitly banned same-sex marriages, finding this 1972 statute in violation of Maryland’s Constitution. In part, she wrote:

• “This Court, like others, can find no rational connection between the prevention of same-sex marriages and an increase or decrease in the number of heterosexual marriages or of children born to those unions…”
• “When tradition is the guise under which prejudice or animosity hides, it is not a legitimate state interest.”