Supreme Court

Thomas Wants the Supreme Court to Overturn Landmark Rulings That Legalized Contraception, Same-Sex Marriage

In a concurring opinion to the Supreme Court's ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade, the conservative jurist called on the court to overrule a trio of watershed civil rights rulings, writing, "We have a duty to ā€˜correct the errorā€™ established in those precedentsā€

Justice Clarence Thomas to swear in Judge Amy Coney Barrett as the 115th justice to the Supreme Court.
Jonathan Newton | The Washington Post | Getty Images

The Supreme Court must revisit and overrule past landmark decisions that legalized the right to obtain contraception, the right to same-sex intimacy and the right to same-sex marriage, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas wrote Friday.

Thomas, in a concurring opinion to the courtā€™s precedent-breaking decision overturning Roe v. Wade and wiping out constitutional protections for abortion rights, said that he would do away with the doctrine of ā€œsubstantive due processā€ and explicitly called on the court to overrule the watershed civil rights rulings in Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges.

Griswold was a 1965 Supreme Court decision that established the right for married couples to buy and use contraceptives. It became the basis for the right to contraception for all couples a few years later. Lawrence was a 2003 Supreme Court decision that established the right for consenting adults to engage in same-sex intimacy. Obergefell was a 2015 Supreme Court decision to established the right for same-sex couples to be married. 

The legal reasoning in all three monumental decisions ā€” as well in the two decisions, Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, that hadĀ prior to FridayĀ established a legal right to abortion care ā€” relied heavily on the doctrine of substantive due process.

Read the full story at NBCNews.com

President Joe Biden discussed the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade in a speech on Friday.
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