If gay marriage is overturned will my marriage be void
RESPECT FOR MARRIAGE ACT: What It Does, How It Interacts With the Obergefell Ruling, and Why They’re Both Essential to Protecting Marriage Equality
by Delphine Luneau •
Congress is Taking Pivotal, Bipartisan Action to Ensure That Even if Loving, Windsor and Obergefell Were Overturned That the Federal Government Would Not Itself Participate in Discrimination Again
WASHINGTON, D.C. — This week, the U.S. Senate is collected to pass the Respect for Marriage Act (RMA) — a bill that will codify federal marriage equality by guaranteeing the federal rights, benefits and obligations of marriages in the federal code; repeal the discriminatory Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA); and affirm that public acts, records and proceedings should be recognized by all states. By doing so, it protects the status quo that exists following the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark rulings in Loving v. Virginia (1967), Windsor v. Joined States (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) — decisions that together made equal marriage the law of the land.
The U.S. Constitution grants the states — not Congress — the influence to determine who may marry in that stat
We’ve been getting a lot of calls, emails and texts over the past few days about the validity of same-sex marriages moving forward, and whether current marriages could be undone. The short answer is, more than likely NO.
Of course, no one can accurately predict what the future holds, and our response below is our opinion. After watching many of the like-minded political “think tanks” and reviewing the comments of our colleagues located throughout the United States, we offer the following.
Is an ambush on Obergefell next?
There does not emerge to be any planned ambush on Obergefell at this time. Other than the mention by Justice Thomas, which may be a forecast of things to come, there is no case pending at this time. Of course, that is not a guarantee that it will not come under scrutiny at some point in the future.
What will happen if Obergefell is overturned?
Like the recent ruling in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case, which overturned Roe v. Wade, the case didn’t outlaw abortion outright; it cleared the way for states to reshape abortion laws state-by-state.
Were Obergefell to be overturned (and we do not believe this will happen
State Bar of Texas
TBJ FEBRUARY 2023
Practical ideas for working
with LGBTQ clients.
Written by Elizabeth Brenner
It’s difficult to overstate the impact of Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 Supreme Court verdict requiring states to extend equal access to marriage to same-sex couples. The landmark ruling brought Texas same-sex couples vital, yet prolonged denied, relationship protections. Before Obergefell, couples with decades-long lives together were nonetheless legal strangers under Texas law. Planning was absolutely necessary to provide the couple with some semblance of protections available to opposite-sex couples. Couples without the money or the knowledge of the need for such planning could be struck with the impact of this inequity in the midst of the most dire of circumstances: losing their homes to relatives of a deceased partner or cut off from contact with a long-term partner monitoring a sudden onset of a stern illness due to interfering family with legal priority to serve as guardian or agent. And yet, prior to Obergefell, Texas couples could only carry out so much to protect their family without marriage recognition. Thousands of
LGBTQ Texans fear Supreme Court will target gay marriage, leaving them legally unprotected
Haley Hickey, a recent law school graduate, plans to open her own law practice in her hometown of Lubbock. She also wants to start a family with her wife. But after Roe v. Wade was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in June, she says her existence is in flux.
“If Texas goes after same-sex marriage, that kind of throws our entire future into chaos,” Hickey said. “I can’t go back in the closet, and all it takes is pissing off the wrong prosecutor for that to get personal animosity that can then be used against me and really jeopardize my career.”
Hickey, along with other LGBTQ Texans, are worried the court will revisit other rulings such as same-sex marriage. If the landmark case Obergefell v. Hodges is overturned, gay marriage would be left up to the states, making it illegal in Texas.
In that case, same-sex couples would not be able to obtain married because of existing laws in Texas, said Christina Molitor, a family lawyer based in San Antonio: “Both that constitutional amendment, which defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman back in 2005, and then the Te