Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/14pdf/14-556_3204.pdf
Page Number: 72

4 

OBERGEFELL v. HODGES 

SCALIA, J., dissenting 

“[T]he  Federal  Government,  through  our  history,  has
deferred  to  state-law  policy  decisions  with  respect  to 
domestic relations.”11 

But  we  need  not  speculate.    When  the  Fourteenth 
Amendment  was  ratified  in  1868,  every  State  limited
marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted 
the  constitutionality  of  doing  so.  That  resolves  these 
cases.  When  it  comes  to  determining  the  meaning  of  a 
vague  constitutional  provision—such  as  “due  process  of 
law” or “equal protection of the laws”—it is unquestionable 
that the People who ratified that provision did not under-
stand it to prohibit a practice that remained both univer-
sal  and  uncontroversial  in  the  years  after  ratification.12 
We  have  no  basis  for  striking  down  a  practice  that  is  not 
expressly prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment’s text, 
and that bears the endorsement of a long tradition of open, 
widespread,  and  unchallenged  use  dating  back  to  the 
Amendment’s  ratification.  Since  there  is  no  doubt  what-
ever  that  the  People  never  decided  to  prohibit  the  limita-
tion of marriage to opposite-sex couples, the public debate
over same-sex marriage must be allowed to continue. 

But  the  Court  ends  this  debate,  in  an  opinion  lacking
even a thin veneer of law.  Buried beneath the mummeries 
and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a 
candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the 
People ratified, the Fourteenth Amendment protects those 
rights  that  the  Judiciary,  in  its  “reasoned  judgment,”
thinks  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  ought  to  protect.13 
That is so because “[t]he generations that wrote and rati-
fied the Bill of Rights and the Fourteenth Amendment did
not  presume  to  know  the  extent  of  freedom  in  all  of  its 

—————— 

11 Id., at ___ (slip op., at 17). 
12 See Town of Greece v. Galloway, 572 U. S. ___, ___–___ (2014) (slip 

op., at 7–8). 

13 Ante, at 10.