Lawmakers clashed over the extent to which same-sex marriage and other hard-won rights are at stake following the US Supreme Court’s decision overturning the Roe v. Wade precedent legalizing abortion.
Members of the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday weighed in on the concepts of due process and privacy, and whether the high court’s take last month in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization would endanger other individual freedoms.
“While Justice Alito specifically claimed that Dobbs was limited to abortion and had no effect on other fundamental rights, I find that assurance to be cold comfort,” Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) said at a hearing examining the potential broader impacts of that decision.
“The Court’s reasoning in Dobbs, if taken to its logical extent, could serve as a roadmap for this conservative majority to eviscerate in future cases other fundamental rights premised on the right to privacy and the doctrine of substantive due process more generally,” Nadler said.
Justice Samuel Alito stressed in his majority opinion that the Dobbs ruling doesn’t threaten constitutional protections like same-sex marriage and contraception. But Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurring opinion, called for the court to reconsider all precedents based on substantive due process.
Some Republicans said Democrats are wrong to...
Federal grand jury charges Farmington Hills adult daycare manager with billing Medicare for therapy never provided A federal grand jury in the Eastern District of Michigan returned an indictment ch...