On June 26th, 2015 the United States Supreme Court handed down a much anticipated decision answering whether or not the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution requires a State to license a marriage between two people of the same sex.[1] In a divisive 5-4 decision, the majority ruled that marriage as a fundamental liberty applies to same-sex couples. Although, Obergefell v. Hodges was facially related to the LGTBQ movement, in reality, this case was pivotally about the Supreme Court's role in our society. Obergefell was a fisticuff battle between liberal and conservative jurisprudence over the Court’s influence on the democratic process in America. This paper will attempt to show that the majority’s ruling, and the reasoning they used to reach it, was inconsistent with the Framers’ wishes for the role of the Court in our constitutional democracy. [1] "Obergefell v. Hodges." Oyez, 3 Dec. 2017, www.oyez.org/cases/2014/14-556.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study employs an ideological rhetorical analysis to investigate three United States Supreme Court decisions concerning the liberties of the LGBT community. An analysis of the rhetoric from these cases for both the majority and dissenting opinions is conducted. These artifacts include Lawrence v. Texas (2003), United States v. Windsor (2013), and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). The purpose of this study is to analyze the rhetoric of these cases to understand the themes undergirding decisions about cases concerning the LGBT community. Themes of liberty, fundamental rights, equal protection, power, and polarization emerge in this study. Ultimately, it is determined that two groups are impacted by these decisions, these groups include the LGBT community and religious members who deem homosexuality as immoral.

Although the U.S. Supreme Court reached the correct result in Obergefell v. Hodges, its substantive due process and equal protection analyses were wrong. First, the majority opinion discusses the concept of equal dignity, which has no legal definition nor has it been used in prior Supreme Court jurisprudence. The majority made another mistake in using substantive due process when Obergefell could have been decided on the basis of equal protection alone. Despite these mistakes, there were parts of the opinion the Court did decide correctly. The end result -- that same-sex couples have the right to marry -- was the correct outcome. This is based on the fact that the Supreme Court has defined marriage as a fundamental right and banning marriage to same sex couples would be discrimination on the part of the government. While the majority was also correct in overruling the prior method of defining fundamental rights set forth by Glucksberg, the Court should not have made defining fundamental rights so unlimited in scope. Justice Kennedy removed the prior standard for defining fundamental rights without creating a new standard for judges to follow in the future, leaving the future of substantive due process cases uncertain. This neglect to implement a new standard to replace Glucksberg’s standard leaves substantive due process open to judicial interpretation. The Court also came close, but still neglected, to create a quasi-suspect class on the basis of sexual orientation. The Court should have created standards that were not so overly broad for future decisions regarding substantive due process, and it should have classified sexual orientation as a quasi-suspect class