With the upheaval caused by the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade came aftershocks of worry about what could come next. Could, as Justice Clarence Thomas suggested in his concurring opinion, same-sex marriage get lined up in the court’s crosshairs as a future target? Contraception? Interracial marriage?
The court’s conservative 6-3 majority has much of America hand-wringing about long accepted rights now vulnerable to being diminished or even entirely struck down. This legitimate concern could be alleviated if those rights were shielded from judicial constitutional interpretation. Congress should step in.
The U.S. House on July 19 passed legislation that would shield same-sex marriage at the federal level. Essentially, the bill codifies protections created by the 2015 Supreme Court ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges that established same-sex marriage as a right under the due process and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment.
