Elizabeth Jo

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,

whether the marriage occurred within the state or without the state was often up to question and left up to individual states.

So some states, if you recall these before times, some states recognize same-sex marriage, but other states didn't.

And in fact, they went further and either passed laws or changed even their state constitutions to say that marriage was only between a man and a woman within that state.

But of course, at the same time, there was a growing movement for marriage equality to recognize that same-sex couples had rights to marriage.