LGBTQ Community Celebrates Justice Kennedy’s Legacy
Anthony M. Kennedy has just announced that he will soon retire from the Supreme Court.
After serving nearly 31 years on the bench, the 81-year-old has decided that it’s time to call it quits. A key swing vote in several decisions that expanded gay rights, Justice Kennedy leaves behind a legacy that Americans of all sexual orientations can appreciate.
BREAKING: US Supreme Court Justice Kennedy is retiring. https://t.co/kdrUxk2XiK pic.twitter.com/xcMihedGsa
— NBC News (@NBCNews) June 27, 2018
It’s not hard to see why members of the LGBTQ community will be sad to see Justice Kennedy leave. Beginning his judicial fight for gay rights in 1996, Kennedy wrote the Majority opinion in Romer v. Evans, which struck down an amendment in the Colorado constitution that barred local governments from recognizing gay and lesbians as members of a protected class. He followed this decision in 2003, writing for the majority again in Lawrence v. Texas, in essence legalizing intimate homosexual activity across the US (about time AMIRITE?).
After 10 years of relative silence on the issue, Justice Kennedy once again proved himself to be a true ally. In 2013 he cast the deciding vote in the decision that obliterated the law barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex unions. Just 2 years later, he would symbolically unite us all with yet another deciding vote to legalize same-sex marriage across the US.
It was Justice Kennedy who once said, “No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were.” The issue at hand, however, is Trump’s potential appointment of a new and polar opposite SCOTUS judge to replace him prior to the midterm elections.
President Trump has pledged to nominate a replacement who will almost certainly vote differently than Kennedy on many issues, putting landmark decisions in jeopardy — from Roe v. Wade to same-sex marriage. https://t.co/h71805ZZ5U
— NPR (@NPR) June 27, 2018
