Marriage – Civil partnership. Sections 1 and 3 of the Civil Partnership Act 2004, to the extent that they precluded a different sex couple from entering into a civil partnership, were incompatible with art 14, taken in conjunction with art 8, of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Supreme Court, in allowing the appellants' appeal, made unequivocally clear that the government had to eliminate the inequality of treatment immediately and that taking time to evaluate whether to abolish or extend civil partnerships could never amount to a legitimate aim for the continuance of the discrimination.