Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/21pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf/19-1392_6j37.pdf
Page Number: 170

Cite as:  597 U. S. ____ (2022) 

23 

BREYER, SOTOMAYOR, and KAGAN, JJ., dissenting 

expanded,  bringing  in  individuals  formerly  excluded.    In 
that way, the constitutional values of liberty and equality 
go hand in hand; they do not inhabit the hermetically sealed 
containers the majority portrays.  Compare Obergefell, 576 
U. S., at 672–675, with ante, at 10–11.  So before Roe and 
Casey,  the  Court  expanded  in  successive  cases  those  who 
could claim the right to marry—though their relationships 
would  have  been  outside  the  law’s  protection  in  the  mid-
19th century.  See, e.g., Loving, 388 U. S. 1 (interracial cou-
ples); Turner v. Safley, 482 U. S. 78 (1987) (prisoners); see 
also, e.g., Stanley v. Illinois, 405 U. S. 645, 651–652 (1972) 
(offering constitutional protection to untraditional “family
unit[s]”).  And after Roe and Casey, of course, the Court con-
tinued  in  that  vein.  With  a  critical  stop  to  hold  that  the
Fourteenth  Amendment  protected  same-sex  intimacy,  the 
Court  resolved  that  the  Amendment  also  conferred  on 
same-sex  couples  the  right  to  marry.    See  Lawrence,  539 
U. S.  558;  Obergefell,  576  U. S.  644.    In  considering  that 
question,  the  Court  held,  “[h]istory  and  tradition,”  espe-
cially as reflected in the course of our precedent, “guide and
discipline [the] inquiry.”  Id., at 664.  But the sentiments of 
1868 alone do not and cannot “rule the present.”  Ibid. 

Casey similarly recognized the need to extend the consti-
tutional  sphere  of  liberty  to  a  previously  excluded  group.
The Court then understood, as the majority today does not, 
that the men who ratified the Fourteenth Amendment and 
wrote the state laws of the time did not view women as full 
and equal citizens.  See supra, at 15.  A woman then, Casey
wrote, “had no legal existence separate from her husband.” 
505 U. S., at 897.  Women were seen only “as the center of
home and family life,” without “full and independent legal
status under the Constitution.”  Ibid.  But that could not be 
true any longer: The State could not now insist on the his-
torically dominant “vision of the woman’s role.”  Id., at 852. 
And equal citizenship, Casey realized, was inescapably con-