It’s the most recent landmark case in our Civil Rights SCOTUS series, the decision that said the fundamental right to marry is protected under the 14th Amendment. How did it come about? What was the status of marriage before June of 2015? And why is the government so involved in the marriage business anyways?
This episode features the voices of Melissa Wasser from the Project on Government Oversight and Jim Obergefell, the named party in Obergefell v Hodges.
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Transcript
Obergefell all.mp3
Jacqui Fulton: I've been married twice the first time I was very young and closeted, in part because of all the homophobia and bigotry and stuff like that.
Nick Capodice: This is Jackie Foltyn, a producer here at Civics 101. And this is Fendall Fulton.
Fendall Fulton: I'm Fendall, I am Jacki's other half.
Nick Capodice: Jackie and Fendall got married at Odeorne Point in November of twenty eighteen.
Jacqui Fulton: I remember when I went with my ex now ex-husband and we're doing the paperwork and stuff and asked if we were cousins or if we were [00:00:30] blood related. I thought that was kind of funny, but it was like super easy to fill out, you know, no problem. And so whenever Fendall and I went to do the paperwork, it asks and asked who is Person A and who is person B? And I was like, well, how do we know? Like, I guess I guess it could be personal because they're older than I am. Yeah.
Fendall Fulton: So I took the A role, Jacqui took the B role. But that's not indicative of our actual actual [00:01:00] roles in life.
Nick Capodice: You're listening to Civics 101. I'm Nick Capodice.
Jacqui Fulton: And I'm Jacqui Fulton.
Nick Capodice: And today we're learning about one of the most recent landmark Supreme Court decisions; so recent it is not yet required in many states civics curriculum, though I imagine it will be soon. The decision that made marriage marriage Obergefell v. Hodges 2015.
Jim Obergefell: A Supreme [00:01:30] Court ruling announced Minutes ago extends same sex marriage In America. The justices ruled Five to four that states...
Jacqui Fulton: Before we get started, I just want to know why. Nick, why is the government involved in marriage in the first place?
Nick Capodice: Well, Jacqui, as you know, marriage was not always about two people who loved each other before the late eighteen hundreds. The explicit goal of marriage was usually to acquire useful in laws, passed down property and gain political and economic power. [00:02:00] But there's a shift around the turn of the century with the rise of wage labor, where states begin to use marriage as a way to give out resources like health care or Social Security. And frankly, they do this because it's cheap to do it that way. Instead of giving everyone those resources, just give them to the breadwinner in a family via an employer and extend them to your spouse and children.
Jacqui Fulton: Ok, and so a same sex union flies in the face of the system and therefore LGBTQ [00:02:30] plus couples who live together did not get those resources.
Nick Capodice: They did not. Same sex unions have existed since the beginning of recorded times, as has homophobia. But in the United States, LGBTQ plus couples have lived together in relationships akin to marriage in every facet. Save the legal benefits. The only way a couple could get those benefits, and this happened predominantly in the 1970s to the 2000s, was for one partner to adopt the other.
Jacqui Fulton: How [00:03:00] far back do we have to go to understand marriage equality laws before June of 2015?
Nick Capodice: The first challenge to the legal definition of marriage being between two people of the opposite sex was in the 1970s,
Melissa Wasser: Baker vs. Nelson, which is a 1971 case out of the Minnesota state Supreme Court.
Nick Capodice: This is Melissa Wasser. She's policy counsel at POGO, the Project on Government Oversight. James McConnell and Richard Baker applied for a marriage license in Minneapolis, and the district [00:03:30] court clerk refused to grant it because they were both men and went up to the Minnesota Supreme Court.
Melissa Wasser: So even though that's a state Supreme Court, Baker in that case ended up appealing to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court had a one line order that said this appeal did not raise, quote, a substantial federal question. And so they couldn't take it.
Nick Capodice: It was dismissed. None of the lawsuits in the 1970s seeking recognition of marriages between gay and lesbian couples were successful. [00:04:00] And so the next big milestone is in 1991 in Hawaii,
Melissa Wasser: The Hawaii Supreme Court had a case that said that their state's prohibition on same sex marriage might be unconstitutional.
Nick Capodice: And the case, called Baehr v Lewin in the Supreme Court of Hawaii, sent their verdict back to a lower court, asking them to demonstrate that denying marriage licenses to same sex couples, quote, furthers compelling state interests.
Jacqui Fulton: Oh, so basically they're saying prove [00:04:30] that preventing marriage, same sex couples is good for Hawaii.
Nick Capodice: Right. And they formed a commission to do just that. Two commissions, actually, the first commission failed to give a report, but the second commission reported they'd studied the benefits of marriage and public policy and they recommended Hawaii open marriage to all.
Jacqui Fulton: Why did they fail to give a report? What was up with that?
Nick Capodice: Honestly, they just couldn't get their stuff together.
Jacqui Fulton: You had one job.
Jim Obergefell: In the mid 90s, [00:05:00] there was that case making its way through the courts in Hawaii and John stepmother at the time actually said, you know, if this happens, if they make marriage a possibility in Hawaii, I'm going to take the entire family there so you guys can get married.
Jacqui Fulton: Who is that?
Jim Obergefell: I'm Jim Obergefell, named plaintiff in Obergefell v Hodges, the landmark Supreme Court marriage equality case.
Jacqui Fulton: The Obergefell?
Nick Capodice: The very same. He and his partner, John Arthur, had been together some time when this all happened in Hawaii, [00:05:30] when it seemed like marriage equality would be possible.
Jim Obergefell: Well, that never happened. And John and I talked about it and we both agreed that for us, we didn't want to just have a symbolic ceremony. We had friends who, you know, had ceremonies in Ohio and elsewhere. But for us, it just wasn't what we wanted. We wanted to marry only if it actually carried legal weight.
Jacqui Fulton: Now might be a good time to explain civil unions.
Nick Capodice: All right. There were different rules in each state regulating same [00:06:00] sex unions. But while couples all over the country would perform civil unions for family and friends, these couples did not receive the state sanctioned benefits of marriage. And we're talking inheritance rights, huge tax benefits, insurance, Social Security. And Jim and John wanted those benefits.
Jacqui Fulton: Yeah, of course they did. Like everybody else,
Nick Capodice: This court case in Hawaii caused a backlash against marriage equality and it brought the topic into the national spotlight. [00:06:30] Battle lines were drawn. States hastily passed legislation mandating marriage is something between one man and one woman,
Melissa Wasser: Not just in Hawaii. It was also at the federal level, which ended up with the enactment of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, and that was by signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1996.
John Kerry: Obviously, the results of this bill will not be to preserve anything but will serve to attack a group of people [00:07:00] out of various motives and rationales.
Robert Byrd: Humanity has discovered that the permanent relationship between men and women is a keystone to the stability, strength and help of human.
Nick Capodice: That was Democratic Senator John Kerry speaking against the Defense of Marriage Act and also Democratic Senator Robert Byrd speaking for it. It passed resoundingly in the House and the Senate with support from both parties. Only [00:07:30] 14 senators voted against it
Melissa Wasser: The Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, was a federal law that defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman. So that meant anything that federal benefits dealt with. So insurance benefits, Social Security, survivor benefits, filing a joint tax return if you were married for those purposes, it was between one man and one woman. And so that was Section three of DOMA. Section two [00:08:00] of DOMA was that states were allowed to refuse recognition of same sex marriages that were granted from other states and other jurisdictions or think like Canada or if other states had same sex marriage laws, it wouldn't transfer state to state like other benefits did.
Nick Capodice: In the decade after Hawaii's ruling, many states, including Hawaii itself, passed constitutional amendments and legislation banning marriage for all but opposite sex couples. And one of the most famous [00:08:30] was Prop eight in California.
The streets of Castro in market were full of people celebrating Barack Obama's win. Their party turned somber, though, when they realized that Proposition eight was headed for victory. Supporters of gay marriage tell us they thought they'd reached a mountaintop...
Nick Capodice: California legalized same sex marriage in May of 2008. And thousands of couples got married. But the backlash was swift. In California, they put a proposition, an initiative that the people vote on on the [00:09:00] ballot, that November, which banned marriage within same sex couples. And financial support for Prop eight poured in from out of state, primarily from religious institutions like the Roman Catholic Church and the Knights of Columbus. And the vast majority of donations, as well as volunteers, came from the Mormon community. And Prop eight passed.
Jacqui Fulton: Yeah, I remember that was heartbreaking. A lot of couples who had already gotten married, didn't they have to have their marriages annulled?
Nick Capodice: No, they [00:09:30] did not have to have their marriages annulled because as soon as the legislation passed, a trio of cases went to the California Supreme Court to argue that Prop eight was unconstitutional because it took away people's fundamental rights. And the court ruled that Prop eight was constitutional, but those 18000 marriages remained legally valid.
Jacqui Fulton: Interesting. Hmm. Were there any gains for those fighting for marriage equality in the wake of all this?
Nick Capodice: There [00:10:00] were a few. Notably in 2004, Massachusetts was the first state to license and recognize marriages between same sex couples. Other states followed, including New York. Which brings us to our next milestone, United States v. Windsor.
Edie Windsor: I wanted to tell you what marriage meant to me. It's kind of crazy how we lived together for 40 years. We were engaged with with the circle that I wear as a pin because I wouldn't wear a ring because I was still in the closet. I [00:10:30] am today an out lesbian. OK, who just sued the United States of America, which is kind of overwhelming for me...
Melissa Wasser: Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer were married in New York State in 2008. Thea died in 2009 and left her entire estate to Edie Windsor. When a spouse dies, their surviving spouse gets to claim a tax exemption. Where I believe you get an unlimited spousal deduction and [00:11:00] you pay no federal estate tax on what you're Spouse leaves you. She wanted to claim that exemption, but was barred by Section three of DOMA, which again dealt with because marriage is between one man and one woman at the federal level, you don't get any benefits. So she had to pay those three hundred and sixty three thousand and fifty three dollars. By the time the case ended, it was over six hundred thirty eight thousand dollars in estate [00:11:30] tax payments that the government had to pay back. But she sued the federal government because if you think about it, what is it? Had it been, Edie, a man you know, then she would have qualified for that unlimited spousal deduction.
Nick Capodice: Melissa was in the courtroom when US v. Windsor was argued and when the opinion was read and the court ruled five to four that the Defense of Marriage Act imposes a, quote, disadvantage, a separate status, and so a stigma to [00:12:00] LGBTQ married couples and thus violated the due process protections of the Fifth Amendment. And so DOMA is struck down
Speaker5: By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriage is less respected than others. Section three of DOMA is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.
Jacqui Fulton: An honest civil clarification here, you said due process in the Fifth Amendment. I thought due process was the Fourteenth Amendment.
Nick Capodice: I had the same question.
Melissa Wasser: And I know listeners are [00:12:30] going to hear there's two due process clauses. What does that mean? Which I totally I totally get the Fifth Amendment binds the federal government. The Fourteenth Amendment binds the states.
Jacqui Fulton: Ok, got it.
Nick Capodice: So what we then have are 50 states each with their own rules when it comes to marriage equality.
Jacqui Fulton: Ok, so how do we get to the national decision on marriage equality?
Nick Capodice: We get there from that favorite dance move of the Supreme Court, the circuit court split.
Melissa Wasser: And [00:13:00] so a circuit split is what happens when one circuit rules one way and another circuit rules the opposite way, and now you have, based on where you're living in the country, in the same United States of America, the law is two different things. So what happened with Obergefell and those associated cases where there were positive rulings towards marriage equality, saying that state level bans were unconstitutional in the 4th, the 7th, the 9th and the 10th Circuit. But if you lived in Ohio, [00:13:30] Kentucky, Michigan, Tennessee, the bans were constitutional. And so that leaves a circuit split. The only people who can rectify a circuit split are the justices of the United States Supreme Court.
Nick Capodice: So the court agrees to hear four cases, one from each state and the Sixth Circuit. And that is how we get to Jim Obergefell
Jim Obergefell: So the first time I met John, honestly, he scared the daylights out of me because I was still a high school teacher. [00:14:00] I was still closeted. And I went out with a friend of mine and we went to a bar near the University of Cincinnati where we had both graduated. So sitting at the bar was his friend, John.
Nick Capodice: It wasn't the first time they met that they got together, nor the second, but the third time they met each other, they decided to be a couple.
Jim Obergefell: And John and I joked that for us, it wasn't love at first sight. It was love at first sight. We became a couple. John tried to talk me out of it, said, Jim, I'm a mess. I've dated a lot of men. [00:14:30] It never ended well, but I wouldn't be dissuaded. I wouldn't be talked out of it. So we became a couple, you know, that Hawaii case, which did not turn out the way we wanted it to. So that was when all of those state level DOMAs started happening and also, you know, the federal level Defense and Defense of Marriage Act. So we just thought marriage is forever going to be something we were denied the ability to do. We just thought it was forever out of our reach.
Nick Capodice: And tragically, [00:15:00] in 2011, John was diagnosed with ALS. And Jim devoted his life to taking care of him.
Jim Obergefell: June 26, 2013 I was standing next to John's bed because at the time he was at home hospice care, and I was a full time caregiver. Well, other than like four hours a week when the hospice nurses visited. So when we heard that the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act, I did. I just leaned over, hugged him and kissed him and said, let's get married. And luckily [00:15:30] he said, yes, but, you know, here we were living in Ohio, which had its own state level version of the Defense of Marriage Act, which meant I could not just put him in his wheelchair and take them six blocks to the county courthouse for a marriage license. So we had to figure out where do we go, where do I take this dying man to do something millions of people simply take for granted?
Nick Capodice: Jim and John considered several cities in which they could get married, but they were all long drives away, severely uncomfortable for John and his wheelchair. [00:16:00] But a friend of theirs suggested Maryland because Maryland was the only state that allowed just one member of a couple to apply for the marriage license, which meant John only had to travel for the ceremony itself.
Jim Obergefell: We also knew who was going to officiate because years before John's aunt Paulette had told us that in her opinion, we represented marriage better than any other couple she knew, and she is well wanted us to be able to marry one day. So she was more optimistic than we were, [00:16:30] I guess, because at Paulette, her nickname is Aunt Tootie, went to the Internet where she clicked the ordained me button because she wanted to be able to officiate if we ever had the opportunity. So after I proposed to John, I called Aunt Tootie and said, Aunt Tootie, do you remember the promise you made, the offer you made to officiate, does that still stand? And of course, Aunt Tootie said, absolutely, Jim. You tell me when and where I will be there.
Nick Capodice: And because of John's condition, they booked a medical jet to get to Baltimore [00:17:00] Airport
Jim Obergefell: And we landed, parked on the tarmac. And got married. I got to take John's hand and we got to say I thee wed. I do. And it really was the happiest moment of our lives.
Nick Capodice: And shortly after their wedding, a lawyer friend of a friend of Jim and John's, Al Gerstein asked to meet with them.
Jim Obergefell: So on Tuesday, five days after we got married, Al came to our home. And during that conversation, he pulled [00:17:30] out that piece of paper that he had searched his files for. And it was a blank Ohio death certificate. And he said, now, my guess is you haven't really thought about this because why would you be thinking about John's death certificate when you just got married? But you guys, do you really get it? You understand that because of Ohio's Defense of Marriage Act, when John dies, his last official record as a person will be wrong. Ohio will say he's unmarried. And Jim, they're not going to list your name as his surviving spouse.
Nick Capodice: Jim went to court and he sued [00:18:00] eight days after their wedding.
Jacqui Fulton: Who was he suing?
Nick Capodice: Initially, he sued three parties, Governor John Kasich, Attorney General Mike DeWine and the city of Cincinnati itself, as these are the three parties involved with death certificates.
Jacqui Fulton: But they were married. Right. And the state of Ohio refused to recognize that marriage.
Nick Capodice: It did. And this was at the heart of their argument.
Jim Obergefell: Our legal argument was, in my opinion, so simple, so clear, so obvious, because [00:18:30] in Ohio, first cousins cannot get a marriage license. In Ohio, an underage couple cannot get a marriage license. However, if they're in another state, that that will issue marriage license to first cousins or underage couples. And they get married in that state as soon as they cross the border into Ohio. Ohio immediately says your marriage exists. You get all of the rights, all of the protections, all of the responsibilities of a married couple, even though your marriage is one that cannot be entered into in Ohio. [00:19:00] So our legal argument was Ohio. You're creating separate classes of people by recognizing some out-of-state marriages, but not others.
Nick Capodice: At the beginning of the hearing, the Cincinnati city solicitors stood up in the courtroom and said, we don't want anything to do with this. John and Jim's marriage should be recognized.
Jacqui Fulton: Wow.
Jim Obergefell: And at five o'clock that day, July 22nd, we won.
Jacqui Fulton: They won?
Nick Capodice: They did.
Jacqui Fulton: But if they [00:19:30] won in Ohio, how did their case get up to the Supreme Court?
Nick Capodice: Well, when John died and it came time to fill out that death certificate, the state had an opportunity to appeal, which it did. And so we get to the Supreme Court, four cases combined into one each with unique circumstances. And since Jim in John's case, had the lowest docket number, the Supreme Court case is to heretofore referred to as Oberg, F.L. v. Hodges.
Jacqui Fulton: Who is Hodges?
Nick Capodice: Yeah, this is interesting. Jim [00:20:00] told me that neither Governor Kasich or Attorney Devine wanted their name attached to the case. So the only respondent was the director of the Ohio Department of Health, Rick Hodges. And as a quick side story, sometime after the decision, a friend of Jim's asked if he wanted to meet Rick Hodges. And Jim was like,
Jim Obergefell: I don't know, Elena, do I? Because, you know, in my mind, even though I'd always thought he's he's just a name. He's just a fall guy, I had no idea. I had no no knowledge of this man, no clue [00:20:30] what he really thought. So we met and we are now close friends.
Nick Capodice: Rick Hodges wasn't even remotely involved with the case and supported rights for LGBTQ plus couples
Jacqui Fulton: Getting back to the case. What were the arguments in court?
Nick Capodice: Here's Melissa again
Melissa Wasser: When the cases were consolidated, the court determined what the legal questions were going to be. They had two. The first question was, does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to license a marriage [00:21:00] between two people of the same sex? The second question, and only the Obergefell case, the other three cases dealt with the licensure of marriage. The Obergefell case was a little different because it was asking the state to recognize a marriage that was not performed in that state. So the second legal question is, does the Fourteenth Amendment require a state to recognize a marriage between two people of the same sex when their marriage was lawfully licensed [00:21:30] and performed out of state?
Jacqui Fulton: It seems that whenever we're exploring civil rights cases in the Supreme Court, the Fourteenth Amendment, dealing with equal protection and due process for states gets brought up.
Nick Capodice: Yeah, and this time there's another constitutional issue. And this is exclusively related to Jim and John's case. It's Article four of the Constitution that something called the full faith and credit clause
Advocate: Of the 14th Amendment does not require states with traditional marriage laws to recognize marriages from other states between two [00:22:00] persons of the same sex.
Justice Scalia: What about Article four? I'm so glad to be able to quote a portion of the Constitution that actually seems to be relevant. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records and judicial proceedings of every other state. Now, why doesn't that apply?
Nick Capodice: I asked Jim, who was in court during the arguments, what he remembered, and he said that two arguments stood out.
Jim Obergefell: One of the justices brought [00:22:30] up the fact that in ancient Greece, based on what we know about Greek civilization, same sex relations were OK. But there's no evidence that that same sex marriage was allowed. Well, why not? Why not? Why do you think that is? And Mary Bonauto, who did the arguments for the right to marry, she said, Your Honor, I I'm in no place to even guess what ancient Greek philosophers thought or believed. It was just such a ridiculous argument. Who cares what [00:23:00] happened in ancient Greece? But then the other one, which I love again, I forget which justice this was brought up, that tired argument that, you know, those of us who were proponents of marriage equality, we were changing the definition of marriage because marriage had meant the same thing for millennia. And Ruth Bader Ginsburg jumped right in and said, no, I'm sorry. We already have changed the definition of marriage because women are no longer the property [00:23:30] of their husbands.
Nick Capodice: Also, Jim remembers this happening.
Jim Obergefell: There was somebody in the public seats who started screaming that we were all going to hell or things like that at the start, and you could hear him as they're dragging him down the hallway, even though the courtroom doors were closed, he had quite the volume,
Advocate: Just as if the court is ready. We're ready. OK.
Justice Scalia: That was rather refreshing, [00:24:00] actually.
Jacqui Fulton: Ok, so that's the anti-marriage equality folks, what are the arguments for it?
Nick Capodice: I think the argument was best summarized in the opening line of the argument from Jim and John's advocate, Mary Bonauto.
Mary Bonuato: Mr. Chief Justice, may it please the court, the intimate and committed relationships of same sex couples, just like those of heterosexual couples, provide [00:24:30] mutual support and are the foundation of family life in our society.
Nick Capodice: The arguments in court, where at the end of April 2015 and as the court reads decisions on Mondays in May and June, Jim started going to D.C. every single week.
Jim Obergefell: I knew I had to be in the courtroom to hear the decision. It I couldn't imagine not being there to hear what the highest court in the land said. You know, I also have to be honest, Nick, from the very start, like we're we're winning this. We're on the right side.
Nick Capodice: And as is often the case, [00:25:00] the Supreme Court has a lot of decisions to read. So they were adding additional days.
Jim Obergefell: But then we were outside the courtroom on the 22nd when someone came running out to say, well, they just added Thursday, June 25th, as a decision day. A few minutes later, someone else came running out and said, well, they just added Friday, June 26th as decision day. And I was there. I was there other attorneys on the case, plaintiffs. And we all looked at each other and said, it's going to be Friday, June twenty sixth. And [00:25:30] the reason we thought that was that's an important date for LGBTQ rights at the Supreme Court. United States versus Windsor, which struck down DOMA, came out on June 26, 2013. Lawrence versus Texas, which struck down anti sodomy laws, came out on June 26.
Nick Capodice: The decision was five four in favor of Obergefell. Justice Anthony Kennedy delivered the opinion. The decision states that both the due process clause and the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment [00:26:00] guarantee the right of same sex couples to marry
Justice Kennedy: In forming the marital union. Two people become something greater than they once were and would misunderstand petitioners to say that they disrespect. Or diminish the idea of marriage in these cases, they're pleased that they do respect it, they respect it so deeply, they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. And the Constitution grants them that right. For these reasons and others set out, in my opinion...
Jim Obergefell: And I burst [00:26:30] into tears. You could hear people around the courtroom sobbing. Al told me later because he was in the courtroom as well. He told me later that he has never seen so many attorneys crying in a courtroom. And, you know, of course, not surprising. My first thought was, John, I wish you were here. I wish you could experience this. I wish you knew that our marriage can never be erased. I wish you could know that. I will always have the [00:27:00] legal right to call you, to call myself your widower, to call You my husband and I miss him desperately. Then I also had this amazing realization that for the first time in my life as an out gay man, I felt more like an equal American than I ever had before.
Nick Capodice: And there were four separate dissents, one for each dissenting justice, and [00:27:30] in something rather rare, each Supreme Court justice usually does this like once a year, for the first time in his tenure on the court, Chief Justice Roberts read his dissent from the bench. Jim walked out of the courtroom. It was bedlam, celebration everywhere. He was being interviewed by CNN.
Jim Obergefell: And I finished that interview and I turned around. I'm looking at the courthouse and someone hands me my phone. He says, Jim, you have a phone call?
Melissa Wasser: [00:28:00]
Nick Capodice:
Jim Obergefell: And here I am in the midst of this joyful crowd having a conversation on speaker with President Obama.
Jacqui Fulton: Yeah, I remember seeing on the news tons of people getting married immediately. My friends were so excited. Some of them were crying and a lot of them made wedding plans that day. [00:28:30]
Nick Capodice: Yeah. And I just got some data on this. In 2019, the Census Bureau released an estimation that there are right now nearly one million Americans in same sex marriages. And that's one of the reasons, Jim says that regardless of the structure and ideology of the Supreme Court, this decision will last forever. It's hard for the Supreme Court to take rights away from people that it has previously granted. But he also says that the work's not done.
Jim Obergefell: I like to say, yes, [00:29:00] we have the right to get married in all 50 states, but we don't enjoy marriage equality. We're far from enjoying marriage equality. I mean, we still have businesses, photographers, bakers, event venues who don't don't want to even throw their business open to the public. If you happen to be a same sex couple, they they want the right to say that their religious beliefs are more important than someone else's civil and human rights. And there are still court officials [00:29:30] and judges who have stopped doing all marriages because they don't want to officiate marriages. For two people of the same sex.
Jacqui Fulton: Nick, it's a tremendous victory. But I just want to point out that this story doesn't have a happy ending. Just like how DOMA passed after the Hawaii case. There was a national backlash in the wake of the Obama decision, and this is specifically aimed at transgender legislation.
Nick Capodice: Jim told me about the recent Supreme Court case, Bostock v. Clayton [00:30:00] County, which ruled that an employer who fired someone for being gay or transgender violates the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But that decision was six to three, and it doesn't apply to everyone.
Jim Obergefell: But that doesn't apply to every job. That doesn't apply to everyone. So we still aren't equal in our job. So if you if you're married, you have a family and you lose your job because someone doesn't like you solely because you're LGBTQ plus. Well, that certainly isn't marriage equality in 2021.
Nick Capodice: There have been so far over [00:30:30] 100 bills introduced to restrict trans rights.
Jacqui Fulton: Yeah, I've actually been fired for being queer and it was devastating. There's nothing I could do about it. And this is something we see in every civil rights case. You can change legislation, but you can't change people's attitudes.
Nick Capodice: And, uh, that's it, I guess, not [00:31:00] just for this case, but for our civil rights and the Supreme Court. We hope you enjoyed it and we hope you follow us on Apple podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts to keep finding out about how our government works. And make sure to visit our Web site, Civics101podcast.org, where you can get transcripts, teacher created lesson plans, activities and so much more. We've thanked her before during the series, but I'm going to do it again. These Supreme Court episodes would not have been possible without the tireless help [00:31:30] of Rebecca Fanning from the U.S. courts. She got such a tremendous number of judges to talk to us about these cases. It made our jobs so much easier. And you can check out any of their great judicial resources at U.S. courts dot gov. This episode was produced by me Nick Capodice with help from Jacqui Fulton, Hannah McCarthy, Mitch Scacci, and Christina Phillips. Erika Janik is our executive producer. Special thanks to person A, Fendall Fulton. Music in this episode from Blue Dot S [00:32:00]essions Cycle Hiccups, Randy Butternubs, Scott Gratton, Ikimashu Oi, and the wonderous Chris Zabriskie.
Jacqui Fulton: Also, I'd like to extend a special thanks to Jim Obergefell for.
Fendall Fulton: His and John's tireless efforts and all the others that put everything on the line to make it possible.
Jacqui Fulton: So we can be married.
Nick Capodice: All right.
