US Lawmakers Move to Protect Same-Sex Marriages After High Court Hinted at Desire to Overturn

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers have pushed forward a bill that would protect the marriage rights of gay, lesbian and bisexual Americans in case the conservative-majority US Supreme Court decides to overturn the 2015 ruling legalizing same-gender marriage nationwide, as they did last month to the 1973 Roe vs. Wade decision.

In a statement put out by House Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) on Monday, a group of Democratic lawmakers, joined by Republican Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), announced they were introducing the Respect for Marriage Act. According to the lawmakers, the bill “would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), enshrine marriage equality for the purposes of federal law, and provide additional legal protections for marriage equality.”

“Three weeks ago, a conservative majority on the Supreme Court not only repealed Roe v Wade and walked back 50 years of precedent, it signaled that other rights, like the right to same-sex marriage, are next on the chopping block,” Nadler said in the release. “As this Court may take aim at other fundamental rights, we cannot sit idly by as the hard-earned gains of the Equality movement are systematically eroded.”

In addition to repealing DOMA, which explicitly allowed states to refuse to recognize same-gender marriages, the Respect for Marriage Act would make it federal law that an individual would be considered married if the marriage was valid in the state where it was performed, and protect the “full faith and credit” of their marriage, as well as provide both them and the US Attorney General with avenues for action against such infractions.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) said on Monday that the bill was slated for a floor vote in the majority-Democrat chamber before the end of the week.

Same-gender marriage was legalized nationwide in 2015 after the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 in Obergefell vs. Hopkins that denying someone the right to marry a person of the same gender as them violated their right to equal protection under the law provided by the Fourteenth Amendment.

However, when the high court issued its decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson last month and overturned Roe vs. Wade, a 1973 decision that legalized abortion nationwide, it signaled that several other cases could also soon be on the chopping block, including Obergefell and other decisions that established the right to privacy, to contraception, and to sex with someone of the same gender.

When it comes to both abortion and same-gender marriage, many US states kept laws on the books banning them even after the Supreme Court ruled them unconstitutional. When Roe was overturned last month, those laws reactivated, immediately banning abortions in numerous US states.

Prior to the Obergefell ruling, 36 states and the District of Columbia recognized and allowed same-gender marriages.

Another effort to protect LGBTQ rights, the Equality Act, has stalled in the Senate amid Republican intransigence and an unwillingness by the Democrats to remove the filibuster rule allowing a minority of senators to block any potential vote on a bill. The act would ban discrimination against LGBTQ people across a wide swath of US public life, including in employment and access to public facilities, by adding gender identity and sexuality to the 1964 Civil Rights Act.