In 2015, the Supreme Court made marriage equality the law of the land. However, for the first time in over five years, Kim Davis (an opponent of same-sex marriage) petitioned for a writ of certiorari to overturn Obergefell. Is there a possibility the court will revisit its finding? How does this decision compare to other recently overturned decisions like Roe v Wade? And is even talking about this a problem in itself??
Talking us through the situation and possible scenarios is Danaya Wright, Professor in Constitutional Law at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.
Transcript
Archival: [00:00:01] Ten years after the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage across the United States, it could now be overturned. Senior Washington correspondent Devin Dwyer is on [00:00:10] the story for us. All right. Give us the deal, Devin. Who is actually asking the justices to overturn this?
Nick Capodice: [00:00:19] You're listening [00:00:20] to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:00:22] I'm Hannah McCarthy.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:23] And today we are talking about a Supreme Court case we have talked about before the 2015 decision that made marriage. [00:00:30] Marriage Obergefell v Hajji.
Archival: [00:00:33] We're going to go to our Ari Melber right now. Ari, I would imagine people are running behind you at the Supreme Court steps from the Supreme Court. We have [00:00:40] read from the bench there is a right to marriage equality. I repeat, speaking to you from the steps of the Supreme Court. There is a right to marriage equality. Read just from the bench now, waiting to get the opinions [00:00:50] as they come running out of the court. Thomas.
Nick Capodice: [00:00:55] And I wanted to talk about this case again, Hanna, because we've [00:01:00] been here before.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:01] How so?
Nick Capodice: [00:01:02] Well, we have talked about a landmark Supreme Court decision in great detail, a famous right to privacy case. [00:01:10] And then we saw that decision get overturned.
Archival: [00:01:13] Enraged abortion rights supporters say Dobbs robs women of a fundamental freedom.
Archival: [00:01:18] My body, my [00:01:20] choice.
Archival: [00:01:20] And give state lawmakers, mostly men, control over their bodies and futures.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:26] You know, when I was making our Roe v Wade episode four [00:01:30] years ago, I was shocked when the guest, Mary Ziegler, said, When Roe is overturned and I say when not [00:01:40] if, I'd never heard someone express that with such certainty. And about a year later, when the Dobbs decision came down, she was proven right.
Nick Capodice: [00:01:49] Yeah. [00:01:50]
Hannah McCarthy: [00:01:50] But what does the overturning of Roe v Wade have to do with Obergefell? Is marriage equality in a similar tenuous position?
Nick Capodice: [00:01:59] Kind of. [00:02:00] Maybe.
Archival: [00:02:02] Former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the landmark Obergefell marriage [00:02:10] ruling. Davis made national headlines.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:12] It feels like a strange thing to do right now to say this right is in danger. And, Hannah, there's a part of me that fears just by saying marriage [00:02:20] equality is in danger, puts it in more danger. But there is a chance that marriage equality will be on the docket in the upcoming Scotus term. So, Hannah, [00:02:30] do you remember somebody named Kim Davis?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:02:32] I do, she was a county clerk who refused to provide marriage licenses to same sex couples, and she continued [00:02:40] to deny those licenses after the ruling in Obergefell. And I believe she went to jail.
Nick Capodice: [00:02:46] Yeah, she did five days in jail. And I'm going to get more into Kim Davis [00:02:50] later. But long story short, lots of appeals, lots of losses in other court cases. But this July 2025, for the first time in years, [00:03:00] Davis filed a writ of certiorari with the US Supreme Court.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:03:05] Okay, so listeners who are not familiar with the case, Obergefell v Hodges, really should listen to [00:03:10] our episode on it. We had the privilege of speaking with the Jim Obergefell. There's a link in the show notes if anyone wants to hear that. But before we look at Obergefell [00:03:20] under this new recent light, can we get a quick summary of the ruling?
Nick Capodice: [00:03:26] Absolutely.
Danaya Wright: [00:03:27] Okay. Well, the finding of the court was really straightforward, [00:03:30] which is that the right of same sex couples to marry was a fundamental right protected by the due process clause [00:03:40] of the Constitution.
Nick Capodice: [00:03:41] This is denier, right? She's a professor of constitutional law at the University of Florida's Levin College of Law.
Danaya Wright: [00:03:47] But that is there's a lot [00:03:50] to unpack and a lot underlying that. So I think we can't talk about anything that's been happening with abortion, with Obergefell [00:04:00] without going back to 1885 1885.
Nick Capodice: [00:04:04] Yes, today's episode is really all about the due process clause in the Constitution. Hanna, you [00:04:10] talked about this a lot in your episode on Lochner v New York.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:04:13] One of the anti canon cases, the cases where people generally agree that the Supreme Court got wrong. [00:04:20]
Nick Capodice: [00:04:20] So wrong. So the due process clause is in the Constitution twice. It's in the Fifth Amendment and the 14th amendment. The text of the fifth says that no person [00:04:30] shall be, quote, deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law, end quote. And the 14th amplifies that by saying, no state shall deprive [00:04:40] any one of those things without due process of law. Now Lochner was decided in 1905, but deniers talking about this whole 50 year period where this [00:04:50] concept was brought up in the courts.
Danaya Wright: [00:04:52] Starting around 1885, going up to the 1930s, you had a really conservative Supreme Court, and that [00:05:00] conservative Supreme Court was very unhappy with a lot of state and federal laws that were aimed at regulating businesses, and that Supreme [00:05:10] Court believed in sort of laissez faire capitalism, no interference, etc.. And so they struck down a whole lot of laws in a lot of cases, on [00:05:20] the grounds that the due Process Clause of the Constitution prohibited governments from interfering [00:05:30] with economic rights. Nobody would get together and into civil society and agree to be governed by a government that [00:05:40] was going to do something so egregious as interfere with your right to work for a dollar an hour, or to work in unsafe mines [00:05:50] and things like that.
Nick Capodice: [00:05:51] And for decades, the court struck down laws that were pro-union laws that regulated how much people should be paid. Any laws [00:06:00] that told companies how to treat their workers?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:06:03] Okay, this is what's called laissez faire constitutionalism, right? Just let the market take care of things. Don't let the government [00:06:10] interfere with the economy. Unfair wages and hours will cease to exist because people won't work in places that treat them that poorly, etc..
Nick Capodice: [00:06:19] Exactly. And [00:06:20] the court justified this by citing the due process clause.
Danaya Wright: [00:06:24] Which is a really vague concept, right? Whether it means just process, just procedure, [00:06:30] or does it actually mean that government has to have a good reason for doing what it's doing? And the idea of that, of substantive due process is that [00:06:40] the government has to have a good reason. It can't just be arbitrary and capricious when it makes decisions to to pass laws that are going to affect people. So [00:06:50] this period from 1885 to 1935, with this very conservative court, that period, I mean, ultimately, the Supreme Court's decisions led [00:07:00] to a complete economic meltdown. Right. They partly caused the the depression and people losing their lives in their homes. And, [00:07:10] I mean, it was just an economic catastrophe. The fact that they would not let government intervene at all. They said, government can't do this. Struck down all [00:07:20] these laws. And finally, you know, FDR comes in, we've got a big popular mandate, and the New Deal sort of takes off.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:29] So FDR wants [00:07:30] to pass all these laws helping workers out, and he keeps running up against the Supreme Court decisions from the last half century that stop him. So how can [00:07:40] FDR get around the Supreme Court? How can the unstoppable force deal with the immovable object? Hanna.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:07:46] By packing that court like a tin. Sardines.
Nick Capodice: [00:07:52] Exactly. [00:07:50] Uh, Franklin Roosevelt said, look, I'm the president. Congress is on my side. The people are on my side. We're [00:08:00] just going to add six more justices to the Supreme Court.
Danaya Wright: [00:08:03] And so in 1935, the first Justice Roberts changes a vote and says, okay, [00:08:10] we give, we give. We're not going to continue to strike down all of this economic legislation. We were wrong. You government. All you state, federal government. Go do whatever you [00:08:20] want. Pass out. Pass whatever laws you want in this area. So the conservatives, you know, really kind of had to eat crow for that period because [00:08:30] they had, in an activist way, made up this doctrine that economic rights were so fundamental and they were [00:08:40] protected by this vague due process clause. The government, they were going to strike down laws left and right. I think you can't understand where we are now with [00:08:50] abortion, with contraception, with same sex marriage, without understanding that history.
Nick Capodice: [00:08:59] Now. Roosevelt never packed [00:09:00] the court, but he did appoint a few justices. And the court then begins to rule in a less Lochner way. And time marches on. [00:09:10]
Danaya Wright: [00:09:12] So fast forward 30 years later tonight to the 1960s. Now we've got a liberal court. Now [00:09:20] we've got a whole bunch of laws, um, outlawing contraception, outlawing interracial marriage, outlawing abortion. And these liberal [00:09:30] justices want to strike those down. And they say, well, there's nothing in the Constitution that says you have a right to do these. So where are we going to find a [00:09:40] good source, a good constitutional provision to protect this liberty interest? Of that people have. And they say, [00:09:50] oh, the due process clause.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:53] Just slapping the hood of that due process clause and saying you can get a whole.
Archival: [00:09:57] Lot of rulings out of this baby.
Nick Capodice: [00:09:58] But now they're [00:10:00] not decisions stopping the government from interfering with how you run your business. They're stopping the government from interfering with your business. Business.
Danaya Wright: [00:10:11] The [00:10:10] whole idea here is that this is a very vulnerable ground constitutional [00:10:20] grounding for these rights. And you can imagine that when the court really came out with it and said, you know what? There's this thing called the right to privacy. And the [00:10:30] word privacy doesn't exist in the Constitution, but we think we can kind of see it lurking around through, you know, [00:10:40] First Amendment rights, the right to be free of search and seizures, all of these other things. And therefore we're going to imagine really, [00:10:50] a right to privacy.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:10:51] I have to wonder about the conservative justices here seeing the very tool they had used turned essentially against them.
Archival: [00:10:59] They [00:11:00] were livid.
Danaya Wright: [00:11:01] You can imagine that the conservatives on the court went ballistic. They said, wait a minute, wait a minute. You made us [00:11:10] stop, right? We had this threatened court packing plan. You accused us of being activist judges, which we were. And now you're [00:11:20] you're going and doing the same thing on the left, on the liberal side.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:25] Now, one of the first big cases to do this was another one we've talked about Griswold [00:11:30] v Connecticut.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:11:31] This is the case that said that laws prohibiting the sale of contraception were unconstitutional.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:36] Yeah. So there were six opinions total in that decision. [00:11:40] Four of the more liberal justices saying, yeah, this.
Archival: [00:11:43] Looks pretty clear to me.
Nick Capodice: [00:11:45] This due process clause says the government.
Archival: [00:11:47] Can't.
Archival: [00:11:48] Interfere with your life, etc.. [00:11:50]
Danaya Wright: [00:11:50] Two conservatives just saying. Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. This is all going back to this substantive due process that we have. We've all agreed that we're going to reject [00:12:00] and we're not going to do this again. But lo and behold, we're going to do it again. What has happened is that after Griswold, then after row loving [00:12:10] versus Virginia, so interracial marriage bans were struck down. You then you gradually see these privacy rights, this idea of substantive [00:12:20] due process growing to include the right to live with whoever you want in your family, the right to same [00:12:30] sex sexual conduct, then eventually the right to decline medical treatment, the right to die, basically, and ultimately then the [00:12:40] right to same sex marriage. And they're all based on this due process, sort of reinvigorated substantive due [00:12:50] process clause or idea that the Supreme Court made up.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:00] All [00:13:00] right. So that is how we get to Obergefell. But this episode is about it coming up potentially. Again, we're going to get to Kim Davis's recent petition and a whole [00:13:10] bunch of if's. What might we see if this is picked up by the court next term? But first we've got to take a quick break.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:17] But before that break, Nick and I promise never [00:13:20] to say give us a thumbs up and smash that subscribe button unless we are doing it for an episode on constitutionalism in Minecraft, but for real. Giving us a review on whatever [00:13:30] app you listen to our show on is one of the best ways to let other people know about it. So do it if you want to. We're [00:13:40] back. We're talking about a lot of possible potential maybes today on Civics [00:13:50] 101, specifically, that marriage equality could be brought before the Supreme Court again.
Nick Capodice: [00:13:56] Again. Potentially.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:13:58] Can we do a recap of how [00:14:00] cases get to the Supreme Court, how they are brought before the Supreme Court?
Nick Capodice: [00:14:04] Uh, sure thing. If you lose a court case, you can appeal your case to an appellate court. Now, [00:14:10] which court exactly depends on your case and your state. But eventually, after appealing as high as you can. And if this is a situation where it's not about just guilt, like [00:14:20] whether you did it or not, but if you feel the law you're guilty of is unjust or unconstitutional, you can petition for a writ of certiorari, which [00:14:30] has a pronunciation that nobody seems to agree upon. Uh, but anyway, the court has to choose it then and say, yeah, we're going to talk about this this [00:14:40] term.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:14:40] How many cert petitions are submitted each year?
Nick Capodice: [00:14:43] About 8000. Wow. Yeah. And they don't pick a lot of them. Here is denial right again.
Danaya Wright: [00:14:49] Normally [00:14:50] the court will accept like they'll take 60 cases or so for Four justices have to agree to take the case. It only takes four, but of course it [00:15:00] takes five to have a majority opinion. So there are situations when four justices will accept a case because they think, oh, we're going to [00:15:10] we want to make a we want to make a point. And then they don't have their fifth vote. And then sometimes they just say, oops, we that was a bad idea to grant cert. We're [00:15:20] going to just dismiss the case which they have done, or they go ahead and decide it. But but then they don't. They sometimes end up with precedents [00:15:30] they don't particularly like. But generally speaking, if there's a circuit split. So if the courts of appeals have not agreed, if they've come up with interpretations of [00:15:40] federal laws or constitutional rights that disagree with one another, that's the kind of case the court likes to take, or cases that are setting really important [00:15:50] constitutional precedents, because the Constitution is the is the supreme law of the land. Those are the ones they they try to pick ones that they think [00:16:00] are going to have some impact.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:16:05] And Kim Davis has filed one of those 8000 cert petitions she has. [00:16:10] And what's her claim exactly?
Nick Capodice: [00:16:12] It is a First Amendment free exercise of religion claim. As Rowan County clerk in Kentucky, Kim Davis refused [00:16:20] to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples and a court ordered her to, and she refused on religious grounds.
Danaya Wright: [00:16:28] And ultimately, she [00:16:30] ended up serving time in prison, and she ended up with large fines she had to pay. I think $100,000 in punitive damages for emotional distress to the couple, [00:16:40] for not doing her civic duty, or what she was required to do by the end of the law, that she had to pay their attorney's fees. I mean, she suffered [00:16:50] significantly, um, from her the the position she took, which was that she argued her religious liberty interests, allowed her to [00:17:00] justified her in not complying with this law and not granting marriage licenses. If Obergefell were overturned, then perhaps [00:17:10] these these judgments, these $360,000 worth of money judgments might be made to somehow go [00:17:20] away.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:17:21] Nick, do we know any of the potential ways the court could decide on this?
Nick Capodice: [00:17:25] Yeah, Danny, I had a few ideas.
Danaya Wright: [00:17:27] Well, first off, I think we need to understand what [00:17:30] would the court do with Obergefell so they have different possibilities, right? One thing they could do is to say, you know what? All of that substantive due [00:17:40] process is hogwash. We're going to throw it all out. We're going to throw out a same sex marriage. We're going to throw out right to die. We're going to throw out every [00:17:50] contraception, every liberty interest based on substantive due process. I don't see them doing that right. I think that would be that would be pretty, uh, pretty [00:18:00] significant. Although Justice Thomas, on every decision, he writes a dissent saying we need to revisit this, this is all illegitimate. So if [00:18:10] that were to happen, a whole lot of privacy interests would fall. I don't think anybody really wants that to happen. I really don't.
Nick Capodice: [00:18:19] However, [00:18:20] there's another route the court could take, and it's the route they took in the Dobbs decision, which overturned Roe v Wade.
Danaya Wright: [00:18:27] Which is to say, well, you know, this is kind of a [00:18:30] funky legal basis of funky constitutional doctrine, but abortion is unique. Abortion is special. Abortion involves potential life. So [00:18:40] we can kind of pull it out from under this privacy umbrella and treat it on its own. And we can do the same with same sex marriage. [00:18:50] We can say, you know what? Same sex marriage historically was not permissible. It's not part of our history and tradition. Therefore, we [00:19:00] can justifiably say we were wrong to extend the substantive liberty interest under due process to same sex marriage, because [00:19:10] we shouldn't have so somehow pull it out and get rid of it.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:19:16] So if the court did decide one way or another to overturn [00:19:20] Obergefell, how would that even happen? Because about a million Americans are in same sex marriages. Could those unions be undone? [00:19:30]
Nick Capodice: [00:19:30] Dina said that is pretty unlikely and very difficult to do.
Danaya Wright: [00:19:36] So are they going to now void all of the marriages [00:19:40] for the last 15 or 20 years that people have entered into? That would be huge. If you think about the reliance [00:19:50] interests, the economic Interests. The number of children who are legitimate, right? I mean, all sorts of things that that unwanted. I think [00:20:00] putting that genie back in the bottle is probably not going to happen. So then it would be a matter of, well, going forward, we're not going to do any more of these marriages, in [00:20:10] which case it could go back to a state by state level. But that's also a problem. That's a problem because marriage is [00:20:20] portable. You know, if you get married in Iowa and you move to California, you don't have to get married again. It's not technically [00:20:30] the full faith and credit provision of the Constitution that requires comity between states, but it was a real issue for same [00:20:40] sex couples prior to Obergefell. If you went from one state to another, you were married in this state, but now you're not married. Just the the technicality of dealing with that. It [00:20:50] was a real pain in the neck.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:20:53] Okay, I have one more Supreme Court decision that feels kind of tied to this one. Maybe closer than any of the [00:21:00] others that we have mentioned. Loving v Virginia.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:03] Yes. Okay, so this is the 1967 decision which struck down laws banning interracial marriage.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:21:09] Did loving [00:21:10] also rely on the Due Process Clause?
Nick Capodice: [00:21:13] Yes it did, but.
Nick Capodice: [00:21:15] In addition, it also relied on the Equal Protection clause. This [00:21:20] is from the 14th amendment. And it says basically that states can't deny people in similar circumstances equal protection under the law.
Danaya Wright: [00:21:28] So when we talk about [00:21:30] the difference between equal protection and due process, equal protection challenges come when the law classifies people into different groups and treats one group [00:21:40] better than another group. Due process clause is when it the government action interferes with an individual's right to do something. [00:21:50] And if it's a fundamental right. The government has to have a good reason for it. If it's just a non fundamental right, like what day my garbage is going to get picked up on. They don't that we [00:22:00] don't care about that right. We can infringe that. You want it on Monday. You're not going to get it on Monday. You're going to get it whatever day they decide to have garbage collection. Right. So there's so [00:22:10] the a due process analysis is always focused on the right at stake. Equal protection analysis is always focused on the classification that is being made [00:22:20] between people that are being treated differently. So if we look at loving, which was about interracial marriage, it was about the right to marry the person [00:22:30] you want, which is a right, which is a due process issue. But it was also because it was limited on the basis of race, and it was treating one group differently than another on the [00:22:40] basis of race. The court struck it down on equal protection grounds as well. Now fast forward to Obergefell Obergefell. The Kennedy [00:22:50] Opinion is 95% due process. But he also throws in there that this is kind of an equal [00:23:00] protection violation as well.
Archival: [00:23:01] The right of same sex couples to marry is derived too, from the Equal Protection Clause. The court's case is touching upon the right to marry, as well as its cases. [00:23:10] Addressing the legal treatment of gays and lesbians have long emphasized the relation between liberty and equality.
Nick Capodice: [00:23:16] And interestingly, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote a concurring opinion [00:23:20] to Justice Anthony Kennedy decision. And she said, you know, I think the whole thing should be equal protection. Let's just leave due process out of it.
Danaya Wright: [00:23:29] So Obergefell, [00:23:30] in loving our bookend cases, they're both have the same dual justifications, dual constitutional theories [00:23:40] going on in them, whereas Rowe did not. Right. Whereas contraception does not. Those are pure the right to die Case. [00:23:50] Cruzan. Those are just about due process, fundamental rights. And that's where the weak leg of the stool is is is this substantive [00:24:00] due process?
Hannah McCarthy: [00:24:01] If due process is the weak leg of the stool? Has anyone considered just scrapping it when it comes to these civil liberties cases? Just [00:24:10] stick to equal protection instead.
Nick Capodice: [00:24:12] Yeah, that is a very good question. And the problem with doing that is that substantive due process is really, really [00:24:20] popular.
Danaya Wright: [00:24:21] I don't think the Supreme Court or anybody really wants to get rid of substantive due process altogether, because we all [00:24:30] kind of like our privacy, whether we're conservative or liberal. We kind of like not having the state in our bedroom. So then it becomes a question of, well, which, which rights? [00:24:40] Why? Why are they picking on these rights? Why are they picking on these things? That's a little I think it's a little harder to justify just picking [00:24:50] on the rights you don't like. And keeping the rights you do. Like when you are a Supreme Court justice. So we all know they didn't like abortion. Okay. We got rid of that. [00:25:00] They may get rid of same sex marriage okay. But then what about the right to die? How are they going to feel about that one? Hard [00:25:10] to say.
Nick Capodice: [00:25:14] The last thing I want to talk about today, Hanna, marriage isn't something that just happens and that's [00:25:20] that. You know, it's not like an event that just is a one time thing. Marriage creates myriad legal and financial privileges. We're talking about taxes, children, [00:25:30] insurance, inheritance, on and on. This is not a simple thing to undo.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:25:35] So I'm thinking about Kim Davis, that clerk who argued that giving a marriage license to same [00:25:40] sex couples goes against her religion. And it kind of makes me think of Roe v Wade, because there are accommodations in states where people have a right to an abortion, wherein a medical provider [00:25:50] who does not wish to assist in one can request an exemption. Could county clerks like Davis get the same thing?
Danaya Wright: [00:25:59] So I could do [00:26:00] that. Um, but one of the things that that bothers me about this case is or about this, that that claim, the idea that, [00:26:10] you know, we could say, well, Kim Davis doesn't have to give, give a marriage license because it violates her personal religious views. Is [00:26:20] everybody in the community is paying taxes. Gay people in straight people are all paying their taxes, and they're paying their taxes to fund a [00:26:30] court system, to fund a police system, to fund all of these public services. And so for somebody to say, I'm taking public [00:26:40] dollars as my salary, but I'm going to choose to only serve a portion of the public that I approve of That [00:26:50] strikes me as being very problematic. She doesn't have to be a state employee or a county employee. She can go get a job [00:27:00] working at McDonalds. And then if she wants to not serve gay people, that's fine. Assuming her employer allows that. But if she's taking taxpayer [00:27:10] dollars for her salary, it seems like there should be some obligation to serve all of the people who are paying your salary.
Hannah McCarthy: [00:27:19] I know [00:27:20] we're not in the prediction game, but from what you've read about this, Nick, do you think it's likely the court will take this case up in the fall?
Nick Capodice: [00:27:30] Well, [00:27:30] I am famously not good at making predictions, Anna, but I want to restate something I said right at the top. So I think it is extremely important to [00:27:40] keep watch on our rights. And we should all take note of the fact that Kim Davis did file for CERT this year, but at the same time, that [00:27:50] filing is in no way an indication that the court is interested in taking this up. And if I say over and over, Obergefell is in danger. This [00:28:00] could give an inaccurate feeling that it is, which weakens a right. And this is a right that is, for now, secure. So [00:28:20] that is what's up and what's not. With Obergefell v Hodges, this episode is made by me. Nick Capodice with you, Hannah McCarthy. Thank you. Marina Henke is our producer, Kristina [00:28:30] Phillips, our senior producer. And Rebecca LaVoy, our executive producer. Music in this episode from Chris Zabriskie and Epidemic Sound, Civics 101 is a production of NPR, New Hampshire [00:28:40] Public Radio.