Support for equal marriage rights softening
While a strong majority of Americans favor equal marriage rights, support appears to have softened in recent years, according to Gallup -- 60% of Americans supported same-sex marriages in 2015, rising to 70% support in 2025, but that level has plateaued since 2020.
Among Republicans, support has notably dipped over the past decade, down from 55% in 2021 to 41% this year, Gallup found.
Davis' petition argues the issue of marriage should be treated the same way the court handled the issue of abortion in its 2022 decision to overturn Roe v Wade. She zeroes in on Justice Clarence Thomas' concurrence in that case, in which he explicitly called for revisiting Obergefell.
The justices "should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell," Thomas wrote at the time, referring to the landmark decisions dealing with a fundamental right to privacy, due process and equal protection rights.
"It is hard to say where things will go, but this will be a long slog considering how popular same-sex marriage is now," said Josh Blackman, a prominent conservative constitutional scholar and professor at South Texas College of Law.
Blackman predicts many members of the Supreme Court's conservative majority would want prospective challenges to Obergefell to percolate in lower courts before revisiting the debate.
The court is expected to formally consider Davis' petition this fall during a private conference when the justices discuss which cases to add to their docket. If the case is accepted, it would likely be scheduled for oral argument next spring and decided by the end of June 2026. The court could also decline the case, allowing a lower court ruling to stand and avoid entirely the request to revisit Obergefell.
"Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett seem wildly uninterested. Maybe Justice Neil Gorsuch, too," said Sarah Isgur, an ABC News legal analyst and host of the legal podcast Advisory Opinions.
"There is no world in which the court takes the case as a straight gay marriage case," Isgur added. "It would have to come up as a lower court holding that Obergefell binds judges to accept some other kind of non-traditional marital arrangement."
