Los Angeles Times If and when the Senate Judiciary Committee questions Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, senators are expected to ask her about whether she accepts Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling legalizing abortion, as “settled law.” Two current members of the court have teed up another question that should be posed to Barrett: whether she sees as “settled law” Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 case in which the court ruled 5-4 that states must make civil marriage available to same-sex couples. On Monday, the justices refused to hear an appeal by Kim Davis, a county clerk in Kentucky who became a heroine for Christian conservatives and was briefly jailed after she refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples in the wake of the Obergefell decision. Davis said “God’s authority” gave her the right to defy the courts. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. agreed with the court’s refusal to hear Davis’ appeal of a lower court decision that she wasn’t entitled to qualified immunity from lawsuits brought by two same-sex couples. But, in a statement written by Thomas, the two justices — who dissented in the Obergefell decision — made it clear they still […]
