The House of Representatives is expected to vote this week on a bill that would enshrine into federal law the right to same-sex marriage, in what lawmakers say comes as a response to suggestions by Justice Clarence Thomas that the Supreme Court could revisit the right to same-sex marriage in the wake of the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The legislation, named the Respect for Marriage Act, was introduced by a group of mostly Democratic lawmakers on Monday. If enacted, the bill would repeal the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman. The bill would also alter the federal definition of marriage to include same-sex unions.
Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, argued in a statement unveiling the bill that Congress “cannot sit idly by as the hard-earned gains of the Equality movement are systematically eroded.”
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The Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus praised the bill, with Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI), the caucus’s chairman, describing it as “a critical step towards protecting marriage equality, which has positively shaped the lives of millions of LGBTQ+ people and families across the country.”
Some lawmakers also noted that the issue was extremely personal for them. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-NY), a co-chairman of the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, said that while he’s been in a relationship with his husband for three decades, “we’ve only spent 8 of them as a legally married couple.”
“For families like mine, the Respect for Marriage Act is a necessary step to protect our fundamental rights,” he added.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) applauded the bill in a Monday statement and said that it would receive an immediate vote by the full House. Companion legislation has been introduced in the Senate, although Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has not yet indicated if and when he will schedule it for a full Senate vote.
The lone Republican co-sponsoring the Respect for Marriage Act is Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). While there are so far no Republican co-sponsors in the House, the bill is nevertheless expected to garner some GOP support when it comes up for a floor vote. A source close to House GOP leadership told the Washington Examiner that top Republicans have not yet decided whether to whip rank-and-file lawmakers to oppose the bill.
The bill comes in response to the Supreme Court’s ruling last month in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the high court overturned Roe v. Wade and found that there was no constitutional right to abortion. In the Dobbs ruling, Thomas wrote a concurring opinion arguing that the Supreme Court also ought to revisit constitutional rights to same-sex marriage, same-sex sexual activity, and contraception.
While no other justices joined him in his opinion, and Justice Samuel Alito maintained in the court’s majority opinion that the Dobbs ruling did not place any other judicial precedents in jeopardy, Democrats were outraged by Thomas’s suggestion, and many grassroots activists demanded a legislative response to circumvent future Supreme Court rulings that could put rights to same-sex marriage and contraception at risk. As a result, along with the Respect for Marriage Act, the House is also expected to vote this week on the Right to Contraception Act, a bill that would codify the right to access contraception into federal law.
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The Supreme Court first established a constitutional right to same-sex marriage in the 2015 case Obergefell v. Hodges. In a landmark 5-4 ruling, the justices found that the right to marriage was guaranteed to same-sex couples under both the due process clause and equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
As polls have shown large majorities have grown to favor keeping same-sex marriage legal, Republicans have largely shied away from their historical opposition to it. But some conservatives have defied the trend — Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) called the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell “clearly wrong” in a recent episode of his podcast, alleging that the high court “ignored two centuries of our nation’s history” when it defined same-sex marriage as a constitutional right.
