John Roberts Quietly Bows to Gay Marriage Ruling

Chief Justice John Roberts, who just two years ago blasted the Supreme Court’s decision to legalize same-sex marriage as a usurpation of democratic governance, seems to have embraced the Court’s marriage equality holding in significant part.

The dissenters in contentious 5-4 decisions often try to keep such cases at the margins of the Court’s jurisprudence. They avoid reliance on the ruling’s holdings and principles, so as to diminish its influence on the Court’s thinking.

Roberts is not following this practice with respect to the Court’s 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges decision, which declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Though he wrote a vigorous dissent from the ruling, he joined two decisions this term relying (in part or in whole) on its reasoning, suggesting a shift in his thinking about the case.

The strongest signal of this shift came in the Court’s per curiam decision in Pavan v. Smith, an Arkansas case involving the state’s refusal to print the name of a non-biological LGBT parent on a birth certificate. The justices summarily reversed the Arkansas Supreme Court’s ruling upholding the practice, citing “Obergefell’s commitment to provide same-sex couples ‘the constellation of benefits that the States have linked to marriage.’” (Read more from “John Roberts Quietly Bows to Gay Marriage Ruling” HERE)

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