In a concurring opinion in the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday ending the constitutional right to abortion, Justice Clarence Thomas urged the court to reconsider past rulings ensuring the rights to same-*** marriage, to same-*** intimacy and to birth control.
The majority opinion, by Justice Samuel Alito, said the
momentous ruling should not be seen as casting doubt on long-standing precedents other than the half-century-old right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade.
Thomas, in his concurring opinion, said he agreed on that point, but added, “For that reason, in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents.”
He listed off three decisions: Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 ruling protecting married couples’ rights to contraception; Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 decision that protected the right to same-*** ****** activity; and Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case protecting the right to same-*** marriage.