The New York Court of Appeals unanimously ruled Tuesday that uncles and nieces can legally marry in the state.

New York, which considered such marriages acceptable until 1893, joins Rhode Island in permitting them today, Judge Robert Smith wrote in the ruling by the state’s highest court.

The court was asked to review an immigration judge’s decision that Huyen Nguyen’s marriage to her mother’s half-brother, Vu Truong, 38, was invalid.

The two have been married for 14 years, but the immigration judge’s finding would have forced Nguyen, a Vietnamese citizen, to leave the United States.

Nguyen, 34, and her husband appealed that ruling, leading to Tuesday’s decision.

“I’m very happy for my clients,” their lawyer, Michael Marszalkowski, told the New York Post.

While laws prohibiting “parent-child and brother-sister marriages … are grounded in the almost universal horror with which such marriages are viewed … there is no comparably strong objection to uncle-niece marriages,” the court’s ruling said.

Marszalkowski won the case by focusing on the precise language of the state’s law, which says, “a marriage is incestuous and void whether the relatives are legitimate or illegitimate between either: 1. An ancestor and a descendant; 2. A brother and sister of either the whole or half blood; 3. An uncle and niece or an aunt and nephew.”

The law says nothing about a niece marrying her “half-uncle,” as was the case here.

“It really was the equivalent of cousins marrying, which has been allowed in New York state for well over 100 years,” Marszalkowski said.

“As people are more mobile and living longer, marriages are ending and people remarry and you get blended families with step-children and half-children,” family law expert Michael Stutman told the Post.

Following the same reasoning and given that same-sex marriage has been legal in the Empire State since 2011, this finding would appear to clear the way for uncle-nephew or aunt-niece nuptials, as well.

New York has given immigrants to America who want to stay a new option – marry a close relative.

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George Upper

George Upper is a U.S. Army special operations veteran, an academic, a poet, and an MBA who started writing political news and commentary when people stopped listening to his rants in person.

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