The House voted 267-157 on Tuesday to pass a bill recognizing same-sex marriages at the federal level.
The vote comes as Democrats have suggested that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage across the country, after the Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month.
Every Democrat and 47 Republicans voted in favor of the measure. The Respect for Marriage Act would formally repeal the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which defines marriage as between a man and woman and was struck down by the 2015 Obergefell ruling.
The new legislation would require the federal government to recognize a marriage if it was valid in the state where it was performed. It would also include legal safeguards for married couples to prevent discrimination and would allow the attorney general to pursue enforcement actions, as well as guarantee that all states recognize public acts, records and judicial proceedings for out-of-state marriages.
The bill also includes federal protections for interracial marriages.
Representative Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, introduced the bill and called its passage “an important step towards protecting the many families and children who rely on the rights and privileges underpinned by the constitutional guarantee of marriage equality.”
However, it is not clear if the legislation will pass in the evenly divided Senate. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell declined to comment on the measure.
Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer said he was “going to look at everything that we can do to deal with these issues” after the Court’s decision in Dobbs.
“Let’s face it: This is a MAGA Supreme Court — a MAGA, right-wing extremist Supreme Court — very, very far away from not only where the average American is, but even the average Republican,” Schumer said.
In his concurring opinion, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Court “should reconsider” its decisions in Griswold v. Connecticut, Lawrence v. Texas, and Obergefell v. Hodges, which established a right to contraception, privacy in the bedroom, and same-sex marriage, respectively.
Thomas’s reasoning was that the Court’s majority found that a right to abortion was not a form of “liberty” protected by the due-process clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. He said the Court therefore had a duty to “correct the error” in the other three precedents, which relied upon the same legal reasoning as Roe. He wrote that after “overruling these demonstrably erroneous decisions, the question would remain whether other constitutional provisions” protected the rights established in the three cases.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the Court’s majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the ruling does not affect issues other than abortion.
In a poll conducted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe last month, YouGov found that 54 percent of Republicans would like to see Obergefell overturned.
However, despite lack of support for Obergefell, which many Republicans believe was wrongly decided, gay marriage is overwhelmingly popular with the American public: A May Gallup poll found that a record-high 71 percent of Americans support gay marriage.