Marriage Ruling Relieves Gay Americans and Leaves Conservatives Pledging New Challenges

Gay Americans expressed relief on Monday after the Supreme Court denied a request to revisit a decade-old decision that established same-sex marriage as a national right. Conservative groups and state lawmakers said they were disappointed that the court was not taking up the issue now, but would continue to press legal challenges.

Before the denial, legal experts had speculated that the court was unlikely to reconsider the issue at this juncture. But the stakes were so high for families and same-sex couples, advocates of same-sex marriage said, that many people were on tenterhooks waiting for a decision.

The petition had come from Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples after the landmark decision in 2015, Obergefell v. Hodges. If the Supreme Court were to overturn Obergefell, many state laws that prohibit same-sex couples from marrying would snap back into effect. Congress enacted a federal statute in 2022 mandating that marriages performed by states be given recognition by the federal government, but that statute does not guarantee a right to marry.

“Do I think it’s a pure victory and we have nothing to worry about?” Jim Obergefell, the named plaintiff in the original case, said on Monday. “No, but I am taking the win today. Everyone across the country who believes that we deserve the right to marry the person we love, whoever we call home, we’re all breathing a bit easier.”

The number of married same-sex couples in the United States doubled in the last decade to 774,000, according to government data.

The possibility of a reversal on Obergefell led some same-sex couples to speed up their marriage plans, advocates said, and added fuel to state campaigns to repeal old statutes and constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage. In Virginia, L.G.B.T.Q. advocates are hoping legislators will approve a state constitutional amendment in 2026 enshrining a right to marry, regardless of race, sex and gender.

“Today’s news is a relief, but we must always remain vigilant,” said Narissa Rahaman, executive director of Equality Virginia, a group that supports same-sex marriage.

A Gallup survey from May of this year found that support by Republicans for same-sex marriage had dropped to 41 percent from 55 percent in 2021. The Southern Baptist Convention, which is often seen as a strong indicator of conservative evangelical opinion, voted overwhelmingly earlier this year to call on the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell.

And in half a dozen state legislatures across the country this year, Republican lawmakers have introduced resolutions urging the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell.

The sponsor of one such measure, Representative Heather Scott, Republican of Idaho, said on Monday that she was undeterred by the Supreme Court’s refusal to take up the issue this year.

“I’ll try to rerun it next year,” Ms. Scott said. “We need to continue to put pressure for them to override. Our constitution is very clear: we will only recognize marriage between a man and a woman. So this Supreme Court ruling is overriding our state constitution.”

Legal advocates of same-sex marriage said that the prospect of the court revisiting the issue served as a reminder that a right to same-sex marriage could not be taken for granted, even at a time when the first generation of married same-sex couples are, in some cases, starting to raise grandchildren.

There is no other clear case in the pipeline, legal experts said, for a direct challenge to Obergefell.

“It’s important to continue to make people aware of how important those family protections are for so many people,” said Jennifer Levi, a lawyer who worked on some of the nation’s first cases, in Massachusetts and Connecticut, on the right to same-sex marriage. “We have certainly seen the court shift its position in other contexts.”