The United Kingdom’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a ban on heterosexual couples entering civil partnerships is discriminatory. Currently, heterosexual couples may only marry, while same-sex couples can either marry or enter a civil partnership.

The five-judge bench was hearing a plea filed by Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, a couple from London who campaigned to allow heterosexual civil partnerships, and say they believe the institution of marriage is patriarchal, The Guardian reported. Steinfeld and Keidan had earlier lost appeals both at the High Court and the Court of Appeal.

“The interests of the community in denying those different-sex couples who have a genuine objection to being married the opportunity to enter into a civil partnership are unspecified and not easy to envisage,” the Supreme Court’s ruling said on Wednesday. “In contrast, the denial of those rights for an indefinite period may have far-reaching consequences for those who wish to avail themselves – and who are entitled to assert them – now.”

The government should have allowed heterosexual couples to enter civil partnerships when it legalised same-sex marriage in 2014, the court added.

Steinfield told BBC after the ruling that she hoped the Theresa May government would now allow civil unions for opposite-sex couples. “We are feeling elated,” she said. “But at the same time we are feeling frustrated the government has wasted taxpayers’ money in fighting what the judges’ have called a blatant inequality.”

“We want to raise our children as equal partners and feel that a civil partnership - a modern, symmetrical institution - sets the best example for them,” the couple said.

The judgement does not oblige the government to change the law, but it is likely that it will now act to do so, BBC said.