Hawaii’s ballot initiative to protect marriage equality in the state has passed, with 52% of voters in favor and 40% opposed.

Voters in the Aloha State were asked to repeal the state constitutional amendment allowing the state legislature to ban same-sex marriage, which was originally passed in 1998.

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The ballot initiative, or Question 1, read: “Shall the state constitution be amended to repeal the legislature’s authority to reserve marriage to opposite-sex couples?” It may have been worded confusingly for some voters, but a “yes” vote was a vote to protect marriage equality.

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“I’m glad that the people of Hawaii voted to remove discrimination from our bill of rights,” Jeff Hong, vice president of the ACLU of Hawaii board of directors, told KHON2.

Hong said that polls showed that Hawaii voters support marriage equality “three to one,” but that that support went down when they read the ballot question as it was written, showing that many people might not have understood the language. “That kind of double-negative speak is confusing,” he said.

Same-sex couples challenged the state’s denial of marriage licenses in 1993, which led the state to enact a ban on same-sex marriage in 1994. The trial court found that the state was discriminating against same-sex couples in 1996, and two years later, voters put language in the state constitution allowing the legislature to ban same-sex marriage. In light of this, the state supreme court reversed the trial court decision.

Marriage equality was legalized by the state legislature in 2013, 15 years later. The 2015 Supreme Court Obergefell v. Hodges decision also protects the right of same-sex couples to marry at the federal level, but several states have been repealing their anti-marriage amendments in light of the Court’s Dobbs decision, which overturned the federal right to an abortion and showed that the conservative Court could be coming after other groups’ rights.

Voters in California and Colorado also voted this past Tuesday to remove anti-marriage language from their state constitutions.

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