Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito Calls Marriage Equality Ruling a Turn ‘Against Religious Liberty’

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito says in his new book that the court’s landmark decision legalizing marriage equality was “perhaps the decisive point in our nation’s turn against religious liberty.”

The devout Catholic conservative has long championed religious liberty.

ABC News notes that Alito had sharply dissented from the case, Obergefell v Hodges, and three years later told a crowd in a private gathering of his beliefs. Marriage equality won in a 5-4 ruling.

The speech he gave was published in So Ordered, a collection of Alito’s speeches that he says represents his judicial point of view.

“In dissent from that ruling,” he said in the 2018 address, according to the outlet, “I expressed my worry that equating the expression of certain views with bigotry — or, if you like, with dignitary harm — would drive believers out of public life.”

In a 2022 speech, he said it had happened.

“Quite suddenly, religious liberty has become controversial,” Alito told the crowd at the Magnificat Foundation, a nonprofit supporting Catholic tradition.

The book features a list from Alito of other cases that he says have struck religious liberty.

But ABC News notes that in almost all the cases he cites, the religious liberty parties won their cases.

That includes a Colorado baker who was sued over refusing to do a wedding cake for a gay couple as well as a wedding website designer, also in Colorado, who didn’t want to create websites for same-sex couples.

Even last year, the Supreme Court gave parents the right to take their kids out of teaching curricula that conflict with their religious beliefs. That case began over an LGBTQ-themed book.

LGBTQ+ rights advocates now fear that marriage equality could be targeted by the court now that it has a conservative majority. He has publicly said that he opposes the original ruling, ABC News reports, but has said he also doesn’t suggest it be overturned.