Blog Author Lambda Legal

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During a Senate subcommittee hearing titled ‘With Prejudice: Supreme Court Activism and Possible Solutions’, 2016 presidential hopeful Ted Cruz and others bashed recent Supreme Court decisions granting the freedom to marry for same-sex couples and ensuring that Affordable Care Act subsidies remain available. Cruz, chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Oversight, Agency Action, Federal Rights and Federal Courts labeled these decisions ‘judicial activism’, and invited witnesses to condemn the Court’s decisions. One witness, Ed Whelan, in written testimony stated: “The Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling last month inventing a supposed federal constitutional right to marry a person of the same sex is brazenly lawless. In the flagrancy and magnitude of its errors in overriding, and cutting short, the democratic processes, Obergefell v. Hodges is rivaled in Supreme Court history only by Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857) and Roe v. Wade (1973).”

This landmark opinion from the EEOC confirms what we have long argued in our cases: discriminating against gay, lesbian and bisexual employees violates federal law.

In light of the ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges which struck down marriage bans nationwide, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit vacated the district court’s ruling in Conde-Vidal v. Rius-Armendariz, that had upheld Puerto Rico’s discriminatory ban.