Judge Clarence Thomas voted this Friday with his colleagues from the conservative majority of the Supreme Court to strike down the constitutional right to abortion, but he also signed an opinion in which, beyond agreeing with the ruling, he opted to also reconsider the historical sentences of the court that protect contraceptive methods, and the rights of the LGTBQ community, including that of marriage between people of the same sex.
Thomas proposed that the Supreme Court overturn the Griswold v.
Connecticut (1965), which protects the right to contraception;
Lawrence v.
Texas (2003), which legalized same-sex sexual relations throughout the country;
and Obergefell v.
Hodges (2015), which recognizes the constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
A justice cannot push for these reviews on his or her own, but his or her opinion can encourage conservative states to legislate to that effect (so that the courts have the final say on the matter) or activists to raise the issue in court.
A concurring opinion agrees with the majority opinion of the Court, but does not share the same reasoning that justifies it.
Therefore, the judge writes his separate opinion and explains the basis of his decision.
“Concurring opinions are not binding as they did not receive the majority of court support, but lawyers can use them as persuasive material,” explains the Cornell University Legal Information Institute.
[The Supreme Court removes constitutional protection of the right to abortion by overturning the landmark Roe v. wade]
Thomas, in a file image. Cliff Owen / AP
Due process provisions
in the US
Constitution prohibit the government from depriving people of their fundamental rights without due process of law.
Thomas believes the Court should also reconsider other cases that fall under the Court's due process precedent: “As I explained earlier, 'substantive due process' is an oxymoron that 'lacks any foundation in the Constitution.'
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Several organizations and activists that defend the rights of the LGBTQ community warned weeks ago that if the Supreme Court reversed Roe v.
Wade, as happened this Friday, other women's and same-sex rights could be at risk.
“The threat to women and reproductive rights is enough,” Evan Wolfson, founder of Freedom to Marry, told NBC News. “The threat to the freedom to marry is real, but there are even greater and more imminent dangers that we must address. ", he added, to "protect against the potential threat to the freedom to marry that may lie ahead."
President Joe Biden issued the same warning when referring to the Supreme Court's draft decision that was circulated in early May.
“If the rationale for the decision were to stand as it was issued (in the draft), a whole range of rights, a whole range of rights, would be at issue,” Biden said on May 3.
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June 24, 202201:16
"And the idea that we're letting the states make those decisions, the localities make those decisions, would be a fundamental change in what we've done," the president said.
Clarence Thomas, a conservative Supreme Court nominee by George HW Bush in 1991, has been clear in the past that he opposes the Supreme Court ruling that legalized same-sex marriage across the country.
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“By choosing to privilege a new constitutional right over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so in an undemocratic manner, the Court has created a problem that only it can fix,” Thomas wrote, along with his conservative colleague. Samuel Alito, in an opinion issued in October 2020.
“Until then, Obergefell will continue to have 'ruinous consequences for religious liberty,'” the two justices wrote in a document they issued after the Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Kim Davis, the former Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk who refused. to give marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2015.
The judges of the Supreme Court who opposed eliminating the right to abortion, Sonia Sotomayor, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan, warned in their joint dissenting opinion this Friday
of the danger that the rights of the people of the same run within the Court. gender
and those who use contraceptives.
The decision of the Supreme Court does not mean that abortion is now illegal throughout the country
June 24, 202201:55
"No one should be confident that this majority has finished its job. The right that Roe and Casey recognized is not unique. On the contrary, the Court has linked it for decades to other established freedoms that involve bodily integrity, family relationships and procreation," the judges wrote.
"Most obviously, the right to terminate a pregnancy grew directly out of the right to purchase and use contraception," the justices noted in their minority opinion.