Four months ago, then-junior Ditra Backup lined up outside the Supreme Court to hear oral arguments for one of the decade’s biggest gay rights cases.
Today, Backup stood on the court’s steps with her best friend Ariel Nathanson, who is gay, and cried when both same-sex marriage rulings went in their favor.
Packed into a boiling crowd holding rainbow flags and hand-drawn posters, Backup congratulated Nathanson as soon as she heard the decision.
“It affects so many people close to me,” Backup, a member of the College Democrats, said. “I told her, ‘I’m so happy for you.'”
Nathanson, also a rising senior, said she went to the court Wednesday because of the cases’ potential impact on her own future.
“I have a personal stake in this, and I wanted to see it be overturned myself,” Nathanson said.
Hundreds of people crammed onto the court’s steps, spilling onto the sidewalks and into the street as 10 a.m. approached and justices began to read their decisions inside. But with cell lines overloaded, few could connect to news sites, like the live-updated SCOTUSBlog, to hear what was happening inside the Court.
Unlike the oral arguments, which drew spectators as early as four days before, lines formed outside the court Tuesday afternoon.
Sophomore Carly Abenstein, who arrived at 1 p.m. Tuesday, was the first in line. She said she sprinted to the Metro after her summer course at the School of Media and Public Affairs to beat out the crowds.
Sitting on a GW blanket, wearing sweatpants and a sweatshirt over her dress, Abenstein said she slept less than an hour before heading into the court this morning.
Inside the courtroom, she said the climate was tense until the justices read their decisions striking down key components of both the Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8. A girl behind her began “hysterically crying of happiness” and the entire room seemed to let out a “sigh of relief,” she said.
Crowds on the court steps waited a few minutes longer to hear the results. Applause and cheers came in waves as members of the crowd got texts and calls from friends who told them about the decisions.
Many in the crowd stayed after the rulings were announced – more than an hour –to greet the plaintiffs and their counsel who helped fight the same-sex marriage bans.
“You walk out of [the courthouse], right out of the front door, and everyone is just screaming,” Abenstein said. “It was the best feeling in the world that there were a swarm of people there for the same reason you were.”
