On June 26, 2015, in a historic decision, the United States Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that the fourteenth amendment guaranteed the right of same-sex couples to marry and that the states could not deny this constitutional right. Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, grounded his analysis of the issue in the fundamental right to liberty of the person and how the Due Process and Equal Protections clauses of the fourteenth amendment guaranteed that same-sex couples could not be denied said right. Each of the four dissenting justices, representing the conservative wing of the Court, wrote dissenting opinions. The decision, Obergefell et al. v Hodges, Director, Ohio Department of Health, et al., is linked below, as is the Guardian’s coverage of the ruling.
Yet, despite the ruling, local and state government officials in a number of states were refusing to issue marriage licenses in protest of a ruling which they say compels them to violate their religious beliefs. Texas’ attorney general publically stated that “employees retain religious freedoms that may allow accommodation of their religious objections to issuing same-sex marriage licenses.” Meanwhile, a county clerk in Kentucky, who refused to issue marriage licenses to anyone after the ruling, has drawn the attention of the state’s governor, who ordered the clerk to follow the law.