In Roe decision, Justice Clarence Thomas invites new legal challenges to contraception and same-sex marriage rights:
Tucked inside the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling Friday that overturned the long-held constitutional protection for abortion was a concurring opinion from conservative Justice Clarence Thomas. In it, he pushed the court to revisit cases that have already been decided related to contraception and same-sex marriage.
Fueling already heightened anxieties from women and LGBTQ groups that the end of Roe could be the tip of the iceberg, Thomas wrote that “in future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents.”
“Because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’ we have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents,” Thomas wrote.
Experts told The Texas Tribune that Thomas’ opinion signals an openness from the court to reconsidering other settled legal precedents related to rights the court has ruled are protected by the constitution.
“The Supreme Court’s decision has brought us into a new era where they are taking away rights instead of giving them,” said Rocio Fierro-Pérez, political coordinator for the Texas Freedom Network, which advocates for individual liberties. “Abortion access is one of several fundamental rights that’s under attack including our right to vote, racial justice, LGBTQ rights, and they’re all intertwined with our right to liberty in which Roe v. Wade was grounded.”
Emily Berman, associate professor of law at the University of Houston Law Center, said Thomas’ opinion sends a strong message.
“He’s saying ‘This opinion doesn’t do it because people haven’t asked us to, but I think people should ask us and we should reconsider this entire area of law,’” Berman said. --->READ MORE HERE
‘Correct The Error’: Clarence Thomas Says SCOTUS Should ‘Reconsider’ Decisions On Contraception, Same-Sex Marriage:
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said Friday that the high court should “reconsider” earlier decisions finding constitutional rights to contraception and same-sex relationships through a controversial legal theory.
Thomas ruled with the majority on Friday in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a highly-anticipated decision that overturned the 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade, which codified a right to an abortion in federal law. The same legal theory that supported a right to an abortion in Roe was also used in a handful of other cases to justify rights discovered through “substantive due process.”
Thomas wrote in a concurrence to Justice Samuel Alito’s majority opinion that “we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”
“We have a duty to ‘correct the error’ established in those precedents,” he continued. “After overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions guarantee the myriad rights that our substantive due process cases have generated.”
Thomas has been a longtime critic of “substantive due process,” a reading of the 14th Amendment that posits that the amendment’s due process clause applies to rights outside of strict legal procedures and rights not explicitly protected in the Constitution.
Thomas’ view of the 14th Amendment is that it “protects the processes by which your rights are adjudicated, not the actual rights themselves,” Jacob Meckler, a law clerk at the America First Legal Foundation, told The Daily Wire. For instance, the right to a firearm made explicit in the Second Amendment is a substantive right, whereas the Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination is a procedural right. --->READ MORE HERE
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