AG Cites 4 Camden County Towns For Discriminatory Marriage Licensing

CAMDEN COUNTY, NJ — The state attorney general's office objects to the marriage-license applications in four Camden County towns. The municipalities are among 28 in the state that lack an option for nonbinary and unspecified gender identities, the New Jersey Office of the Attorney General said Wednesday.

The AG's office sent notices of violation to local governments in Audubon, Hi-Nella, Pennsauken and Woodlynne. The towns' municipal websites only allow marriage applicants to list themselves as "m" (male) or "f" (female), which constitutes LGBTQIA+ discrimination, according to the state agency.

The practice is inconsistent with the New Jersey Department of Health's marriage-license application. Since 2019, the health agency has included a third gender option for nonbinary people, individuals with undesignated or unspecified gender identities, and others who don't wish to list themselves as male or female.

Nonbinary identity is an umbrella term for those who don't neatly fit into the categories of "man" or "woman" or "male" or "female" as a gender identity.

The AG's office sent notices of violation to each town, warning them to update their application forms. Such violations could result in fines of up to $10,000. The state gave municipalities the option to resolve the violations and forgo any fines by:

• updating their websites to state that marriage licenses are available to qualifying couples of all gender compositions.
• updating the websites to include links to the state health department's marriage form and the agency's webpage of frequently-asked questions about same-sex marriage.
• ensuring that the website doesn't contain gender-restrictive language regarding who may obtain a marriage license.
• adopting a written policy prohibiting discrimination against people using or seeking to use the municipality’s offerings and services.
• providing training on compliance with anti-discrimination laws to all municipal employees involved in drafting website language and issuing licenses.

The AG also sent violation notices to the following cities and towns: Carney’s Point, Chester Township, Commercial, Delran, Fair Haven, Farmingdale, Lopatcong, Lumberton, Manasquan, Milltown, Morris Plains, Morristown, Ocean Gate, Oceanport, Old Bridge, Pemberton, Pohatcong, Raritan Borough, Stockton, Sussex Borough, Vineland, West Cape May, Westhampton and Westville.

Marriage forms, including the state health department's, typically require that applicants list their sex. Gender and sex aren't the same, with distinctions that major American medical associations recognize. However, state law effectively recognizes the "sex" labels as gender identifiers, since intersex people would otherwise fall outside of the chromosomal binary of male (XY) and female (XX).

The discriminatory language listed by New Jersey cities and towns was first flagged last summer in a report from the Latino Action Network, Hudson P.R.I.D.E., and Garden State Equality. The report found that several municipal websites expressly limited marriage licenses to "opposite-sex couples."

Patch also found that some of those websites also included instructions for minors to get married. New Jersey legalized same-sex marriage in 2013 and banned child marriages five years later. Read more: Child Marriage Legal, Same-Sex Not: Outdated Info Given To NJ Couples

Several local officials said this was an oversight and they would update their marriage forms. They also said their municipalities have not discriminated against same-sex couples filing marriage applications since state law began protecting that right.