Obergefell v. Hodges, ten years on
A decade after the Court guaranteed same-sex couples the right to marry nationwide, the 5-4 decision rests on ground its critics still want to move.
Jim Obergefell married John Arthur on an airport tarmac in Maryland in 2013. Arthur was dying of ALS and could not leave the plane. They flew there because their home state, Ohio, would not let them marry. At first Obergefell's fight was narrow: he wanted to be listed as the surviving spouse on Arthur's death certificate. Ohio refused.
That refusal became Obergefell v. Hodges. On June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Fourteenth Amendment requires every state to license marriages between same-sex couples and to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere.
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Kennedy grounded the decision in both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. He framed marriage as a fundamental right and held that excluding same-sex couples from it demeaned their dignity.
Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Justice Samuel Alito dissented as well. Roberts argued the Court had seized a question that belonged to voters and legislatures. The dissents were sharp, and they have not faded.
The decision settled the law fast. Same-sex couples gained access to the full architecture of marriage: spousal Social Security benefits, inheritance, joint adoption, hospital decision-making, tax treatment, recognition as next of kin.
Ten years on, the holding stands, but the ground beneath it has shifted. In 2022, when the Court overturned the constitutional right to abortion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Justice Thomas wrote a concurrence urging the Court to reconsider Obergefell along with its rulings on contraception and intimate conduct.
Congress responded. In December 2022 it passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which requires the federal government and the states to recognize valid same-sex and interracial marriages performed in other states. The law does not force a state to issue licenses if Obergefell falls. It guarantees recognition, not the right to marry at home.
That gap matters. Were the Court ever to reverse Obergefell, a state could again refuse to license same-sex marriages within its borders. Couples could marry elsewhere and demand recognition, but the right to marry where they live would no longer be constitutionally protected.
The decision turned ten in June 2025. It remains binding precedent. It also remains a 5-4 ruling resting on a doctrine that several sitting justices have signaled they would revisit.