# Respect for Marriage Act (2022) Signed by President **Joe Biden on December 13, 2022**, the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) is the **statutory backstop** for same-sex and interracial marriage rights in the event the Supreme Court overturns *[[Obergefell v. Hodges]]* or *[[Loving v. Virginia]]*. The Act: - **Formally repeals the [[Defense of Marriage Act]]** (whose Section 3 had already been struck down by *Windsor* and whose Section 2 had been rendered inoperative by *Obergefell*) - **Requires the federal government to recognize** any marriage that was valid in the state where it was performed - **Requires states to recognize same-sex and interracial marriages** performed in other states (Full Faith and Credit override) - **Does NOT require states to issue same-sex marriage licenses** themselves — that requirement comes from *Obergefell*'s constitutional holding, which RFMA does not encode ## Why It Passed When It Did RFMA was a direct response to the **Dobbs Thomas concurrence**. Justice [[Clarence Thomas]]'s June 2022 concurrence in *[[Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization]]* explicitly called for the Court to "reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including *Griswold*, *Lawrence*, and *Obergefell*." Within weeks, Senate Democrats (and a small bipartisan group of Republicans led by Tammy Baldwin, [[Susan Collins]], [[Kyrsten Sinema]], [[Thom Tillis]], and Rob Portman) negotiated a statutory backstop that would preserve marriage-recognition rights even if *Obergefell* were overturned. The final Senate vote was **61–36** (with 12 Republicans joining all Democrats); the House passed it **258–169** (with 39 Republican votes). ## What RFMA Does and Doesn't Do **What it does:** - Locks in federal recognition of all valid marriages, regardless of whether *Obergefell* stands - Locks in cross-state recognition of valid marriages - Repeals DOMA's now-dormant remaining provisions **What it doesn't do:** - Does not constitutionalize marriage equality — only the Supreme Court can do that, and only through a Constitutional decision - Does not require any new state to issue same-sex marriage licenses; if *Obergefell* falls, individual states could resume state-level bans (though married couples' marriages would remain federally and cross-state recognized) - Does not protect against future federal legislative repeal (a future Republican Congress could repeal it) ## Place in the Vault RFMA is the **legislative defensive crouch** of the post-Dobbs marriage-equality era. It is the most significant pro-LGBTQ federal legislation since the [[Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act]] (2009) and the only major federal LGBTQ-rights statute enacted during the Biden administration. Its passage required a bipartisan coalition that would not exist in the post-2024 Congress, making it a closing-window achievement. --- ## See Also - [[Queer Liberation Ecosystem]] - [[Queer Liberation Timeline]] - [[Defense of Marriage Act]] — fully repealed by this act - [[Obergefell v. Hodges]] — the underlying constitutional holding this act backstops - [[Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization]] — the case that triggered the legislative response