House to vote on same-sex marriage protections in response to Supreme Court Roe ruling

LGBTQ activists and supporters hold a rally outside the U.S. Supreme Court as it hears arguments in a major LGBT rights case on whether a federal anti-discrimination law that prohibits workplace discrimination on the basis of sex covers gay and transgender employees in Washington, October 8, 2019.

Legislation to codify same-sex marriage nationwide and strengthen other marriage-equality protections will be voted on Tuesday by the House.

If a marriage is legal in the state where it was performed, it will be considered valid under federal law. The bill would make it illegal to deny full faith and credit to an out-of-state marriage based on sex, race, ethnicity or national origin. The authority to enforce that rule would be given to the U.S. attorney general.

The 1996 law that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman would be repealed.

The Supreme Court gutted the Defense of Marriage Act. The court ruled that the constitution guarantees same-sex marriage rights.

The House is expected to vote on the Respect for Marriage Act in the afternoon. The bill is expected to be passed by the house.

It's not clear if it will get through the Senate, where the parties are split evenly and 60 votes are needed for most legislation to pass. Many conservatives in the chamber will argue that states should have the final say on marriage laws for same-sex couples.

Lawmakers are going to debate a bill Tuesday that would codify the right to contraception, a move that was spurred by the court's decision last month. Legal precedents protecting abortion rights were struck down by the ruling.

The conservative majority, which includes three justices appointed by Donald Trump, argued that the right to abortion is not protected by the constitution.

Many people were concerned that the court could threaten other rights.

Justice Clarence Thomas concurred with those concerns. The justice argued that the ruling in Dobbs should lead the court to reconsider landmark cases such as the rights to obtain contraceptives, engage in private sex acts and marry someone of the same sex.

"As this Court may take aim at other fundamental rights, we cannot sit idly by as the hard-earned gains of the Equality movement are systematically eroded," said House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y.

Nadler said that if Justice Thomas's concurrence teaches anything it's that we can't let our guard down or our rights and freedoms disappear into a cloud of radical ideology and questionable legal reasoning.

The other justices didn't agree with Thomas. Concerns were raised that the court would be willing to challenge those rights in the future.

Samuel Alito stressed that nothing in the opinion should be seen to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.

The three liberal justices were unconvinced.

The liberals wrote that they couldn't understand how anyone could be confident that today's opinion would be the last of its kind.

The bills protecting same-sex marriage and contraceptives can overcome the Senate's 60-vote hurdle according to Sen. Dick Durbin. The Republican senators were asked if they would vote for the legislation.

Ted Cruz said on Sunday that the Supreme Court's decision to allow same-sex marriage was wrong.

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