Thursday, the North Dakota Senate turned down a motion that would have asked the Supreme Court to review its important 2015 decision on marriage equality.
Senators voted 31 to 16 against the motion, which was first brought up by Republican state Rep. Bill Tveit in January. It would have asked the Supreme Court to overturn its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges and “leave unaddressed the natural definition of marriage as a union between one man, a biological male, and one woman, a biological female.”
People should speak out against the Supreme Court’s decision and ask for marriage to be defined again as only the formal union between a man and a woman, Tveit said in February when he was speaking in support of the resolution.
If two people of the same gender want to work together or legally bond, he said, “they must call it something other than marriage.”
GOP North Dakota state Rep. Austin Foss is one of only three openly gay men in the state legislature. He said he never thought he and his husband, whom he married last year, would have to fight the law to be seen as a married couple.
In February, Foss said, “This hurts.” “Just because I don’t like the way your relationship is named, I don’t come into your church or home and make you change it.”
The North Dakota House passed the bill on February 24 by a vote of 52 to 40. All but 29 Republicans voted against it, while all but five Democrats voted for it. Saturday, senators in the state talked about the bill for 10 minutes before voting on Thursday.
After the vote on Thursday, Cody Schuler, who is the advocacy manager for the American Civil Liberties Union of North Dakota, said that rejecting the motion “was the right thing to do.”
“The blind vote, on the other hand, means that North Dakotans won’t be able to see how their senators voted,” he said. “Calls to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges ignore the progress made toward equality and inclusion, and they weaken the diverse and welcoming fabric of our society. Our elected leaders need to be held accountable by the votes of the people they represent.”
“The legislature should be taking care of North Dakota’s many real and complicated problems.” Schuler said, “Our lawmakers shouldn’t waste time on meaningless virtue signaling.”
There are resolutions in at least four states this year from Republicans that would ask the Supreme Court to overturn its ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges if they pass.
In public, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) slammed a similar attempt by Republicans in the state House to ask the court to overturn the important decision.
Gallup says that support for marriage equality is still high across the country, though it went down a little last year. This was mostly because Republicans are against it. They did a poll and found that Americans who live in states where same-sex marriage would stay legal if Obergefell v. Hodges were overturned are more likely to support marriage equality than Americans who live in states where it would become illegal.
