Elizabeth Jo

And the basic idea with the Full Faith and Credit Clause is that the states are supposed to respect the laws, records, and court decisions of other states.

That's the general idea.

Well, what it means in the specifics, however, is that if, for instance, you have a state court issue a judgment in your favor, let's say you win a case and the court awards you damages or money, you can ask a court in another state to enforce or respect that judgment.

Let's say if the person who owes you money now has left the state and taken their assets with them.

The defendant doesn't get another chance to redo the case just because the dispute has essentially traveled to another state.

Got it.

That's really what the clause is about.

Yeah.

Most of the time, though, the full faith and credit clause is mostly overlooked.

It doesn't feel like a hot topic, right?

That's the way it's supposed to work in theory.

But there are a few areas where there have been some important questions.

And actually, one of them is marriage.

So in 2015, the Supreme Court decided the case of Obergefell versus Hodges.

And that's the case in which the Supreme Court recognized a constitutionally protected right to same-sex marriage.

And so there had been a longstanding constitutionally protected right to marriage before the Obergefell case, but it wasn't until 2015 that the Supreme Court formally recognized that this right also included the LGBTQ community.

So that raises the question, well, what was life like before Obergefell?

It's hard to remember.

Yeah, it's hard to remember.

But the answer is that whether or not any state recognized same-sex marriages,