# Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) Decided **June 26, 2015**, 5–4 (Kennedy joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, Kagan). The Supreme Court held that the [[Reconstruction Amendments]] requires all states to license and recognize same-sex marriages on the same terms as opposite-sex marriages. The decision capped a 25-year strategic litigation campaign that began with state-level domestic partnership cases in the early 1990s. ## The Doctrinal Foundation [[Justice Anthony Kennedy]]'s majority opinion grounds the right to marry in **both** the Due Process Clause (as a fundamental liberty interest) **and** the Equal Protection Clause: > The right to marry is a fundamental right inherent in the liberty of the person, and under the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the [[Fourteenth Amendment]] couples of the same-sex may not be deprived of that right and that liberty. The opinion explicitly traces a lineage from [[Loving v. Virginia]] (1967) — which struck down anti-miscegenation laws — through *Zablocki v. Redhail* (1978) and *Turner v. Safley* (1987) (marriage rights for prisoners). The doctrinal point: marriage as fundamental right is not a 2015 invention but a half-century-old line of cases. ## The Strategic Litigation Path Obergefell was the product of a deliberate campaign: | Year | Case | Significance | |------|------|--------------| | 1993 | *[[Baehr v. Lewin]]* (HI) | First state-level marriage equality victory; triggered DOMA backlash | | 1996 | DOMA passed | Federal anti-marriage-equality statute | | 2003 | *Goodridge* (MA) | First state to legalize same-sex marriage | | 2008 | California Prop 8 | Backlash mechanism — voter-passed constitutional amendment | | 2013 | *[[United States v. Windsor]]* | DOMA Section 3 struck down | | 2013 | *[[Hollingsworth v. Perry]]* | Prop 8 effectively struck down on standing grounds | | 2015 | *Obergefell v. Hodges* | Nationwide marriage equality | The 22-year arc from *Baehr* to *Obergefell* demonstrates the [[Legal Strategy as Movement Infrastructure]] thesis: civil rights litigation is generational work, not single-case work. ## The Backlash and the Defensive Statute The dissents in *Obergefell* (Roberts, Scalia, Thomas, Alito) signaled the doctrinal vulnerability. [[Justice Thomas]]'s *Dobbs* concurrence (2022) explicitly called for the Court to "reconsider" *Obergefell*, *[[Lawrence v. Texas]]* (2003, sodomy laws), and *Griswold v. Connecticut* (1965, contraception) — the entire substantive-due-process line of cases. Anticipating this, Congress passed the **[[Respect for Marriage Act]]** in December 2022, providing federal statutory protection for both interracial and same-sex marriages even if the underlying constitutional precedents are reversed. The defensive statute model — passing legislative protection in anticipation of judicial rollback — is a contemporary resistance technique developed precisely for the post-*Dobbs* era. ## Current Threat State-level resolutions calling on the Supreme Court to overturn *Obergefell* have passed in multiple Republican-controlled state legislatures during the 2024–2026 cycle. While these are non-binding, they signal an organized petition campaign aimed at the Court. The [[Trump 2.0]] administration's broader rollback of LGBTQ protections (gender-affirming-care restrictions, military service restrictions, federal-employee protections) has not yet directly attacked *Obergefell* but has been read by movement lawyers as setting predicate conditions for an eventual challenge. **The Dobbs author says it is not coming (October 2026).** In a CBS News interview with Jan Crawford released October 3–5, 2026, [[Samuel Alito]] — who wrote [[Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization]] — said he does not anticipate the Court overturning *Obergefell*, and that he saw no realistic prospect of it because of the passage of time and the degree of reliance on the decision: "After Obergefell, people of the same sex got married and entered into contracts…it was much more concrete." He contrasted that with [[Roe v. Wade]], which he characterized as having operated on "women's ideas about the kind of society that they were going to live in" and therefore as "much more abstract." This is the most direct signal available on the Court's current appetite, and it is worth reading precisely. It is a prediction from one justice about reliance interests, not a commitment, and the reliance test it invokes is the same test the *Dobbs* majority applied to *Roe* and found wanting — after all but [[Clarence Thomas]] had called *Roe* settled law in their confirmation hearings. The petition campaign in the state legislatures is unaffected by an interview. ## See Also - [[Resistance Hub]] - [[Loving v. Virginia]] — the doctrinal predecessor - [[Bostock v. Clayton County]] — Title VII complement - [[Reconstruction Amendments]] — textual basis - [[Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization]] — the unmaking precedent on substantive due process - [[Legal Strategy as Movement Infrastructure]] — the campaign that produced this win - [[Samuel Alito]] — the Dobbs author on why this one stands