Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.
A little after 10 a.m. on June 26, 2015, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy started summarizing his majority opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges from the Supreme Court bench. Six and a half minutes later, after reviewing the details of the case and reflecting on history, culture and politics, he announced the court’s ruling.
“The court now holds that same-sex couples may exercise the fundamental right to marry in all states,” Justice Kennedy said. “No longer may this liberty be denied to them.”
I was downstairs, in the court’s press room. As soon as the justice began talking, court personnel handed out copies of the 98-page decision, which included five opinions. Reporters rushed to their cubicles to skim it.
Just three years before, initial reports from CNN and Fox News mistakenly said that the Supreme Court had struck down the heart of the Affordable Care Act. In the marriage case, I wanted to be fast — but I definitely wanted to be right.
I had covered the court for The New York Times since 2008, collaborating with a series of superb editors. That year, I was working closely with Jill Agostino, an unflappable colleague in the paper’s Washington bureau. We spent weeks preparing draft articles anticipating various outcomes. I asked her not long ago what she remembered about that morning.
“You called me directly when you got the decision, and you had read through enough of it in a hurry, but of course we were both so terrified of making a mistake,” she wrote in an email. “We wanted to be quick, but not too quick. You said, ‘5-to-4 upholding … ’ and then you paused, and then you said: ‘Yes, upholding same-sex marriage. Go ahead and send it.’”
The Times’s news alert went out at 10:04 a.m. It said: “In a long-sought victory for the gay rights movement, the Supreme Court ruled on Friday that the Constitution guarantees a nationwide right to same-sex marriage. The decision, the culmination of decades of litigation and activism, came against the backdrop of fast-moving changes in public opinion, with polls indicating that most Americans now approve of same-sex marriage.”
A joyful crowd on the Supreme Court plaza cheered as the news arrived. Inside the courtroom, as Justice Kennedy continued to speak, my colleague Julie Davis reported that several lawyers seated in the bar section of the court’s gallery wiped away tears, while others grinned and embraced.
I was in the press room, adding quotations, context, analysis and a sense of the vast consequences of the decision. My article, revised and refined throughout the day, was published on the front page of the next day’s paper, under a banner headline made up of two words from Justice Kennedy’s opinion: “Equal Dignity.”
After Justice Kennedy finished, having spoken for nine minutes, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. summarized his dissent from the bench, a rare move reserved for profound disagreement. Indeed, it remains his only oral dissent in his two decades on the court.
“The people of a state are free to expand marriage to include same-sex couples or to retain the historic definition,” he said.
That approach — leaving questions of great moment to the political process — anticipated the court’s reasoning in the 2022 decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion and this month’s ruling upholding a ban on transition care for transgender youth.
The Obergefell decision, now a decade old, may represent the high-water mark for the constitutional rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people. Justice Kennedy retired in 2018. Two other members of the majority are no longer on the court.
But three of the dissenters are. They include Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who have continued to question Obergefell.
Earlier this month, the Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly to call for the overturning of the ruling, saying that the successful effort to overrule Roe v. Wade could serve as a game plan.
The current term, which will end in the coming days, will be my last as a Supreme Court beat reporter. After 17 years on the job, I’m moving to a different role at The Times, covering the law more broadly while continuing to write Sidebar, my column on legal affairs.
Should the Supreme Court decide to reconsider Obergefell, it will fall to another reporter to get the news out — fast.
Adam Liptak covers the Supreme Court and writes Sidebar, a column on legal developments. A graduate of Yale Law School, he practiced law for 14 years before joining The Times in 2002.
The post Reflecting on Same-Sex Marriage Ruling a Decade Later appeared first on New York Times.
