Thomas Clarence Wants The Supreme Court To Overturn Landmark Rulings That Legalized Contraception & Same-Sex Marriage

Thomas Clarence Wants The Supreme Court To Overturn Landmark Rulings That Legalized Contraception & Same-Sex Marriage

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, 74,  is sparking major controversy as he calls for overturning decisions that legalized the right to obtain contraception, the right to same-sex intimacy and the right to same-sex marriage!

As previously reported, the Supreme Court announced on Friday (June 23) that they would be overturning the landmark decision for Roe vs. Wade, which granted women the federal constitutional right to an abortion. Critics of the ruling are now concerned about the future of women’s reproductive rights.

In addition to overturning Roe vs. Wade, Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas said that he would get rid of the doctrine of “substantive due process” and called on the court to overrule the civil rights rulings in Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges. Thomas wrote,

“As I have previously explained, ‘substantive due process’ is an oxymoron that ‘lack[s] any basis in the Constitution…In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.”

Griswold v. Connecticut 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 v. Texas was a 2003 Supreme Court decision that established the right for consenting adults to engage in same-sex intimacy. And in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court made a decision in 2015 to establish the right for same-sex couples to be married. According to Clarence Thomas’s recent message, he now wants the court to overrule the civil rights rulings in all three of these landmark cases.

According to reports, substantive due process is a term in constitutional law that essentially allows courts to protect certain rights, even if those rights are not explicitly cited in the Constitution. It has been interpreted in many cases to apply to matters relating to the right to privacy — including privacy over matters like love, intimacy and sex — which is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution.

Reportedly, conservative jurists such as Clarence Thomas have long dismissed the legal reasoning that supported that interpretation of substantive due process. And in his writings in Friday’s (Jun,24) decision, Thomas made it very clear what his stance was on the matter. He wrote,

“In future cases, we should ‘follow the text of the Constitution, which sets forth certain substantive rights that cannot be taken away, and adds, beyond that, a right to due process when life, liberty, or property is to be taken away. Substantive due process conflicts with that textual command and has harmed our country in many ways…Accordingly, we should eliminate it from our jurisprudence at the earliest opportunity.”

What are your thoughts? Let us know in the comments below!

[VIA]