Ted Cruz Says Supreme Court Was Wrong to Legalize Gay Marriage: 'Ignored 2 Centuries of Our Nation's History'
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Just weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz believes the court should reconsider another landmark case: Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage.
On Sunday's episode of his podcast, Verdict With Ted Cruz, the Republican said the 2015 case that legalized gay marriage in the U.S. "was clearly wrong when it was decided."
"It was the court overreaching," Cruz added, USA Today reports.
Elsewhere in the episode, Cruz compared the Obergefell case to Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion until being overturned by the court in June.
Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Ted Cruz
The issue, Cruz suggested, is that the legality of same-sex marriage should be left to the states.
"Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation's history," Cruz said. "Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states. We saw states before Obergefell, some states were moving to allow gay marriage, other states were moving to allow civil partnerships. There were different standards that the states were adopting."
Following the Roe decision, lawmakers have hypothesized about the possibly of the court overturning other landmark rulings, like Obergefell.
Back in May, President Joe Biden warned that a Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade could have ramifications beyond the right to abortion, telling an audience at a Democratic fundraiser: "Mark my words: They are going to go after the Supreme Court decision on same-sex marriage."
The process of overturning Roe v. Wade began when Mississippi's ban on abortions after 15 weeks was struck down by a federal court. The state then asked the Supreme Court to either overturn Roe v. Wade or allow states to pass pre-viability abortion bans.
The decision to overturn Roe was officially announced in June, a month after a 98-page opinion obtained by Politico — allegedly authored by Justice Samuel Alito and leaked to the press in a major breach of confidentiality — stated that "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start," and that "we [the Supreme Court majority] hold that Roe and Casey [another ruling on the right to abortion from 1992 which upheld the previous court decision] must be overruled."
Already, some members of the court have signaled a willingness to overturn other historic cases.
In his concurring opinion on the overturning of Roe, Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court should reconsider Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges — the rulings that currently protect the right to buy and use contraceptives without government restriction, the right to same-sex relations, and the right to same-sex marriage.
From Thomas' concurring opinion: "... in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous,' ... we have a duty to 'correct the error' established in those precedents."
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Jim Obergefell, the lead plaintiff in the historic Obergefell v. Hodge case, said in a statement sent to PEOPLE in June that Thomas is "not the Supreme Deity."
"The millions of loving couples who have the right to marriage equality to form their own families do not need Clarence Thomas imposing his individual twisted morality upon them," Obergefell said in his statement. "If you want to see an error in judgment, Clarence Thomas, look in the mirror."
