North Dakota voters adopted a constitutional amendment in November 2004 that defined marriage as the union of a man and a woman and prohibited the recognition of same-sex relationships as well as civil unions and domestic partnerships [REF].
Following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges in June 2015 (see below), a judiciary committee of the North Dakota Legislature began examining the possibility of removing the now invalid statutory and constitutional restrictions on same-sex unions in the state.