Supreme Court same-sex marriage decision leaves Obergefell ruling intact and keeps marriage equality protected nationwide.
By denying review without comment, the Court effectively reaffirmed marriage equality as settled law, at least for now. Davis had been ordered by lower courts to pay damages and attorneys’ fees to couples she denied licenses.
What the Ruling Means for Same-Sex Marriage Equality
The Supreme Court’s decision not to intervene leaves the 2015 precedent intact — confirming that same-sex couples retain constitutional protection under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses.
Legal scholars point to the “reliance interest” — millions of marriages, families, and state systems built around the rights Obergefell granted — as a stabilizing factor. Even Justice Amy Coney Barrett has acknowledged that marriage equality carries a different level of public reliance compared to other rights recently revisited by the Court.
The refusal to hear Davis’s case comes at a time when some conservative groups and state officials have been ramping up efforts to challenge Obergefell. The Southern Baptist Convention recently passed a resolution calling for the Supreme Court to revisit marriage equality, while more than a dozen states still have “trigger laws” that could automatically ban same-sex marriage if Obergefell were ever overturned.
Despite those pressures, today’s Court chose not to open that door. Analysts note that conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito have signaled willingness to reconsider the 2015 decision, but others — including Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Barrett — may be wary of the social and legal chaos that a reversal would unleash.
At the heart of the Davis case is a familiar tension between religious freedom and government duty. Davis argued that her First Amendment rights protected her from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. But courts repeatedly found that as a public official, she was obligated to carry out constitutional law, not her personal beliefs.
By refusing to revisit her appeal, SCOTUS reaffirms that government officials cannot use religion to deny constitutional rights to others — a message that strengthens both legal precedent and public trust in equal treatment under the law.
While Obergefell remains in place, its survival continues to depend on the Court’s composition and the cases it chooses to hear. For now, same-sex couples can rest assured their marriages are legally protected, but advocates remain vigilant.
LGBTQ+ organizations like the Human Rights Campaign and GLAAD hailed the decision as a major win, calling it an “accountability moment” that preserves dignity and equality for millions of Americans.
1 thought on “Supreme Court Refuses to Overturn Same-Sex Marriage”
I wasn’t too worried about this. There was never any constitutional justification for denying law-abiding, taxpaying Gay couples the same right to marry that Straight couples have always taken for granted. The Obergefell decision was just a logical progression from previous cases like Loving v. Virginia, Lawrence v. Texas, and United States v. Windsor.
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) there are 1,138 legal protections, regulations, and responsibilities that pertain specifically to married couples. Much of this has to do with Social Security, inheritance, healthcare, etc. If the government wanted to get out of the marriage business altogether, it would be a legal quagmire.
Some would also suggest that marriage should be left up to individual states, but the point would be moot since a marriage honored in one state is honored across state lines. Marriage is fundamentally a contractual agreement between two adults. Any couple can fly off to Las Vegas for the weekend, get married by an Elvis impersonator, and that marriage is automatically honored back home, thanks to the “Full Faith and Credit” clause.