USA TODAY International Edition

Same- sex marriage litigants team up

Both fear effect of Barrett’s confirmation

- Elinor Aspegren Contributi­ng: Richard Wolf, USA TODAY; Kate Sosin, the 19th

Two names will be remembered as on opposing sides in the case that made same- sex marriage equality the law of the land.

But to each other, they are just Jim and Rick.

Jim Obergefell became a civil rights activist after the landmark 2015 case bearing his name as the plaintiff. He and the man on the other side of the v, Richard Hodges, former director of the Ohio Department of Health, have developed a friendship.

“It is awfully fun to surprise people when they find out we’re friends,” Obergefell said.

More surprising: They share “the same commitment to equal rights for all,” Hodges said.

The two litigants teamed up again Tuesday with an urgent message: That the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court is rushed – and it’s “very threatenin­g” to the LGBTQ community.

Although they have previously discussed their experience­s with the landmark case and their resulting friendship, before this week the two had never actively lobbied for a cause together.

But Barrett’s confirmation threatens the very rights he fought for, Obergefell said, and it was time to speak up.

“The fear is very real” that marriage rights could be dismantled, Obergefell said in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY before a press conference announcing their opposition to Barrett’s nomination. It is “very realistic for us to be concerned about what could happen to our right to marry or our families.”

Hodges told USA TODAY that in the 2015 case, he had a duty to defend the Ohio constituti­on, which barred his agency from acknowledg­ing same- sex married couples.

But the defense of equal rights “is a cause worth fighting for,” he said, and he supports marriage equality.

Of bigger concern to him, however, is that the Senate “can’t come together to protect people who are suffering from the coronaviru­s, but we can push a Supreme Court nominee through in record time.”

Recently, the Supreme Court has defended the advancemen­t of LGBTQ rights. But Obergefell worries that Barrett’s confirmation could change that.

Barrett, President Donald Trump’s pick to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, has given lectures to Alliance Defending Freedom, which the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated an anti- LGBTQ hate group. Twenty- seven LGBTQ organizati­ons opposed her confirmation to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017.

Obergefell pointed to Barrett’s questionin­g of whether key rights protection­s include LGBTQ Americans.

At a 2016 lecture at Jacksonvil­le University, Barrett said it would “strain” the text of Title IX to allow transgende­r people to use public restrooms that match their genders, categorizi­ng trans women as “males.”

The high court ruled in June that that same law, which bars sex discrimina­tion in the workplace, applies to gay, lesbian and transgende­r workers.

While Obergefell doesn’t think that marriage equality legalizati­on will be reversed in the court, he worries that Barrett’s nomination will mean the “rights and responsibi­lities” that come with marriage could be chipped away.

This disintegra­tion could mean “further erosion of protection­s in employment, education, housing, credit and more” for the LGBTQ community, he said.

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Obergefell
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Hodges

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