This month, the Supreme Court was given the chance to revisit the 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling and allow state legislatures to revoke same-sex couples’ right to marry. On Monday, November 10th, just four days before the Court would have convened to review the case, they declined to hear it.
This opportunity for reexamination began with an appeal from Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who claimed her Christian beliefs entitled her to oppose gay marriage rights back when they were granted in 2015. After refusing to issue marriage licenses to several same-sex couples and ordering her office to formally deny these requests, she was sued and jailed for her defiance.
Ten years later, Davis submitted a petition to the Supreme Court on July 24, pleading for the overturn of Obergefell v. Hodges. This accompanied other less impactful pleas such as a release from liability for her 2015 conviction and a pardon that Davis claimed she deserved as “an accommodation of her sincere religious beliefs under the First Amendment,” as per her official petition.
While reviewing the docket they’d hear during the upcoming court session on Friday, the Supreme Court rejected Davis’s appeal, squashing her hopes of repealing same-sex marriage rights entirely.
While this was a relief for LGBTQ+ couples across the country, this petition’s passing had seemed probable enough to temporarily spark fear in the LGBTQ+ community, a reality that is utterly concerning. It signals a regression toward traditionalist and anti-secular values in the United States government, further supported by the rampant anti-immigration and anti-abortion sentiment currently sweeping through the nation.
In the last several months, SCOTUS has ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Venezuelan immigrants, putting those who were previously protected by TPS at risk of deportation. The Court also complied with the Trump administration’s emergency request to lift a ban in Los Angeles that prevented ICE officers from racially profiling individuals in the area, with Justice Brett Kavanaugh stating that ethnicity is a “relevant factor” in immigration stops. In 2022, they voted to overturn Roe v. Wade, rescinding the constitutional right to abortion in the US, and pro-birth beliefs have only propagated since then.
With these new decisions, marginalized groups in the US, especially people of color, women, and LGBTQ+ individuals, have grown anxious of further legal attacks on their civil rights. It is a possibility that more constitutional freedoms may be revoked in the next several years as conservative philosophy becomes popularized and normalized by the federal government’s right-leaning ideologies.
The Roar 