Elizabeth Jo

inheritance, the ability to visit your spouse while they're ill, all kinds of things, the rights over children, things like that.

It's extremely important, right?

And keep in mind that RIFMA is essentially responding to this threat from one justice on the court, right?

Because of that.

Exactly right.

It's the same reason as DOMA.

Congress is relying on the effects clause, the power given to it, under that portion of Article 4.

So right now, RFMA doesn't mean too much because Obergefell is the law of the land, right?

But if for some reason, let's hope not, the Supreme Court were to overturn that decision from 2015, I would expect that we'd see legal fights about the meaning of RFMA and whether Congress actually has the authority to have passed it in the first place.

So that's kind of a sneaky way that we might see the full faith and credit clause come up in some future instance.

And that is why full faith and credit is pretty interesting.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

And part of that is because it's pretty clear as a concept that

If you have something, and again, assuming that marriage is something that is one of the things called out by the full faith and credit clause that is protected by that clause, Congress should be able to say, hey, states, you recognize it in one state, then every state has to recognize the same thing.

You'll notice what RFMA is not doing.

It is not saying there is a federally protected right to marriage.

same-sex marriage, because it's not super clear that Congress has the ability to do that.

And presumably, you know, Congress and President Biden were just didn't really want to go there.

So they kind of took a compromise measure here with full faith and credit.

All right.