Mar. 27, 2026
No ring, no rights?
The California Supreme Court has agreed to revisit its 1988 Elden v. Sheldon ruling that bars unmarried cohabitants from suing for loss of consortium and emotional distress, potentially vindicating Justice Allen Broussard's prescient dissent that called the marriage-only rule unjust and outdated.
Thirty-eight years ago, Justice Allen E. Broussard of the California Supreme Court sent a message to the future in a powerful dissent over how marital status should affect the right to sue.
Broussard was the court's second Black justice and a staunch foe of discrimination who spent his youth in the Jim Crow south and joined the NAACP when he reached the Bay Area in the 1940s.
His call for the equal treatment of couples in personal injury cases will now get a fresh he...
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