Justice Thomas: SCOTUS ‘should reconsider’ contraception, same-sex marriage rulings

When POLITICO published an initial draft majority opinion of the court's decision on Friday, Democratic politicians warned that it would lead to the reversal of other landmark privacy-related cases.

A whole range of rights are at stake if the rationale of the decision were to be sustained. The president said last month that there was a whole range of rights. It would be a fundamental shift in what we have done if we were to let the states make those decisions.

No one should be confident that this majority is done with its work according to the dissent opinion released on Friday.

The right to abortion is a part of the constitution. The Court has linked it to other settled freedoms over the years.

The court's past rulings are all part of the same constitutional fabric.

The majority opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito insists that the justices did not pose a threat to other precedents by abandoning the abortion law.

The important moral question posed by abortion was not one of the decisions cited. They are in need of assistance. Alito wrote that they do not support the right to obtain an abortion and that the conclusion that the constitution does not confer such a right does not undermine them. The right to abortion is the subject of our decision. There should be no doubt on the precedents that don't concern abortion.

The court's liberals said that Thomas' simultaneous invitation to open up numerous other precedents for review wasn't worth much.

The first problem with the majority's account is Justice Thomas's concurrence, which shows he is not with the program. One Justice is planning to use the ticket many times.

Even though no other justice joined Thomas in his concurrence, he stuck to his long-stated views on the legal theories behind many of the decisions. It seems doubtful that many of Thomas' conservative colleagues would be eager to revisit issues like contraception and same-sex marriage anytime soon, given the claims in Alito's opinion that the court's rulingFriday casts no doubt on those decisions.

Conservative colleagues gave fodder to the court's liberal members and left-leaning critics by not explicitly rejecting Thomas' stance.

The justice who came closest to rejecting Thomas' position was the one who was in the majority. Overruling the precedents doesn't mean the overruling of them and doesn't threaten or cast doubt on them.