Elizabeth Jo

So it's actually not just saying, hey, states, you have to respect other states' judgments.

It's actually a source of federal legislative authority.

So with DOMA, it becomes legal for states to refuse to recognize otherwise legal same-sex marriages.

And while many states legalized discrimination against same-sex marriages, other states also began to recognize rights.

So Massachusetts became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage in 2004, and that's 11 years before the Obergefell decision in the Supreme Court.

And many states followed, but many states did not.

And then the Supreme Court did decide the case in 2015.

There, the Supreme Court said that same-sex couples have a fundamental right to marry in all states.

OK, well, on the one hand, the Supreme Court case does basically invalidate every state law that refused to recognize same sex marriage.

Yeah.

After the Obergefell decision, every state has to recognize the right to same sex marriage because of the Supreme Court's decision.

It's constitutionalized this particular right to marry.

And Obergefell also invalidates DOMA, the federal law.

That law also is no longer a good law because why?

It interferes with a constitutionally protected right to marry.

But instead of just saying, this is like, well, it's interesting background material, who cares?

Well, in 2022, the Supreme Court decided to unrecognize the constitutionally protected right to an abortion in Dobbs versus Jackson Women's Health Organization.

And that case overturned the right that was first recognized in Roe in 1973.

And even though abortion might seem to be pretty distinct from marriage, and of course it is a different topic,

it was not a different topic for Justice Thomas.