The Supreme Court unanimously turned away Kim Davis’ previous appeal in 2020. Citing her position as a government official, Davis attempted to leverage qualified immunity as a shield for litigation from the gay couples whose marriage licenses she denied. In turning Davis away, the justices upheld lower court rulings permitting the lawsuit to proceed. However, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito released a joint statement branding Davis as “one of the first victims of this Court's cavalier treatment of religion in its Obergefell decision,” which they said “enables courts and governments to brand religious adherents who believe that marriage is between one man and one woman as bigots, making their religious liberty concerns that much easier to dismiss.” [CBS News, 10/5/20; NBC News, 10/5/20]

After the Trump administration delivered legal victories for right-wing media’s anti-trans crusade, pundits began to reenergize efforts to eliminate same-sex marriage. Reeling from the loss handed down in the form of the Obergefell ruling, right-wing media quickly shifted their focus after the decision to attacking transgender people, recycling the same sort of rhetoric used against gay marriage. With the Trump administration enacting its far-reaching anti-trans agenda, right-wing pundits and lawmakers are now vocalizing their intent to strike down Obergefell. [Media Matters, 3/26/25]
 

In 2025, at least nine states have taken shots at gay marriages or the Obergefell ruling itself. Lambda Legal warned of state resolutions either entreating the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell or proposing marriage statuses exclusive to heterosexual couples — championed by right-wing media as “covenant marriages.” It also notes that the Southern Baptist Convention has made overturning the ruling a priority. But Lambda Legal emphasized that these efforts are “legally meaningless.” [Lambda Legal, June 2025; The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 2/4/25]

The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh called gay marriage a “fiction” with “no social utility.” While specifically denigrating same-sex marriage as “a contradiction of terms,” Walsh claimed that the Constitution did not protect the right of any marriages, regardless of sexuality. “If you have a right to get married … what if you can’t find someone willing to marry you?” Walsh argued. “Does that mean all the people turning you down are violating your rights?” Walsh also argued gay marriages do “nothing for society,” which is not the majority view; in 2022, 61% of U.S. adults agreed that gay marriage was good for society, according to Pew Research Center. In the decade since the Obergefell ruling, same-sex weddings boosted state and local economies by about $5.9 billion, generating $432.2 million in sales tax revenue. [The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 8/12/25; Pew Research Center, 11/15/22; Williams Institute, June 2025]

The Daily Wire’s Michael Knowles said he hoped Supreme Court justices have “the fortitude, the courage, the vision” to overturn same-sex marriage. Knowles denied marriage is an issue of privacy, calling it “a public act with the basic public union articulated by the Supreme Court.” The Daily Wire host also claimed gay marriage has greater societal implications: “If you can redefine marriage, if you can redefine the family, you can redefine all of society. … If you can redefine the basic constituent piece of the entire political order, you can do anything politically. That's what this is about. Those are the stakes.” Knowles added that he thinks “the political order” will “allow us” to overturn Obergefell and that people didn’t think Roe could be overturned before it was. [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 8/14/25]

BlazeTV’s Liz Wheeler also claimed Obergefell was a product of “the Supreme Court pretending there is a Constitutional right to gay marriage in the Constitution when there's not.” While conceding a low likelihood of the court taking up the petition, Wheeler shared Knowles’ confidence that Obergefell would turn out like Roe: “Just like abortion, the left tries to tell us that [same-sex marriage] is untouchable, that this cannot be overturned. I'm not so sure that they're correct about that.” She also claimed far-reaching implications of the decision, saying, “Marriage means the union between one man and one woman, and they said, ‘No, no, we're going to redefine that. It now means the union between any two consenting adults regardless of their sex.’ When government has the power to redefine a word, they can redefine any word. And if they can redefine words, if they are the arbiters of truth, then they're tyrants.” [Blaze Media, 8/12/25]

Tim Pool called the Obergefell v. Hodges same-sex marriage decision “unconstitutional and psychotic.” During an episode of Timcast, Pool said Davis should have been fired for refusing to do her job rather than jailed, though Davis was an elected official and could be removed from her position only by impeachment. Pool also called the decision “legally … garbled nonsense.” [Rumble, Timcast IRL, 8/11/25; NBC News, 9/1/15]

The Federalist called Obergefell “disastrous” and “ill-fated.” The outlet cited Thomas’ dissent in the gay marriage ruling, which said there would be “collateral damage to other aspects of our constitutional order that protect liberty.” The Federalist claimed Thomas was vindicated “on the issue of transgenderism, which arguably would not have become as mainstream without the majority’s Obergefell decision.” [The Federalist, 8/12/25]

Various right-wing media figures have maintained a veil of denial and skepticism regarding threats to Obergefell. Walsh and Wheeler, though advocating for Obergefell’s fall, both expressed doubt that it would be overturned. Wheeler asserted that the case was “probably not going to be heard by the Supreme Court,” while Walsh said it “won’t be overturned,” noting that they won’t likely take the case and if they do, “it’s very hard to see Kavanaugh and Gorsuch and Roberts voting to overturn gay marriage.” The Washington Examiner published the headline “The invented threat to gay marriage” for a piece that tried to absolve Trump of liability for that threat. It argued: “While I think it’s unlikely that the Supreme Court will grant Davis’s petition for review, even if it did, it still wouldn’t guarantee that gay marriage would be overturned. Considering Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s past writings, Chief Justice John Roberts’s long-standing aversion to overturning precedent, and Justice Neil Gorsuch’s past support for gay rights, there is a very real possibility that this court would uphold gay marriage even were it to review the case.” [Blaze Media, 8/12/25; The Daily Wire, The Matt Walsh Show, 8/12/25; The Washington Examiner, 8/14/25]

Right-wing media figures denied any danger to Obergefell after Roe fell, a reality they had also once denied. After the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overruled Roe, hosts on Fox News and Newsmax called concerns about the fate of Obergefell “fearmongering” and “left-wing lunacy.” Prior to Roe’s downfall, some of the same hosts claimed that a challenge to the ruling was “unlikely” and one of “the lies the left will tell you.” [Media Matters, 6/29/22]

Some mainstream media appear skeptical about the potential for the Supreme Court to revisit Obergefell. Axios published an article titled “Here’s why advocates doubt the Supreme Court will revisit marriage equality,” saying experts say eliminating the right to gay marriage would be “incredibly complicated.” Slate cited both the low probability that Davis’ case would be picked among thousands, as well as her 2020 failure to sway the justices, but drew attention to how the court has chipped at LGBTQ rights in other avenues, citing 303 Creative v. Elenis, which gave businesses a license to discriminate, as well as book bans, school censorship, and the likelihood that it would strike down conversion therapy bans next year. The New Republic expressed similar doubts. [Axios, 8/12/25; Slate, 8/13/25; The New Republic, 8/13/25]

After Dobbs was handed down, some right-wing media called for Obergefell to be overturned. The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro blasted those raising concern about the fate of Obergefell after Roe fell, saying that “[Democrats] try to claim, well, they might overturn Obergefell. First of all, Obergefell is a bad Supreme Court decision and if we had a Supreme Court worth its salt, they would overturn Obergefell.” Podcaster Steven Crowder used the fact that abortion was returned to the states to push the same for gay marriage: “If states can determine all kinds of marital laws, why can't states determine — they can determine what qualifies for a marriage in many other facets. … Why can't they say, well you can't get married. Why? Oh, because you both have dicks.” [The Daily Wire, The Ben Shapiro Show, 5/4/22; BlazeTV, Louder with Crowder, 6/24/22]

Mainstream media failed to warn about the impending death of Roe. Mainstream outlets helped deliver the death blow to nationwide abortion rights by overlooking legislation out of states like Texas until it was too late, uncritically platforming anti-abortion advocates and “treating abortion like a political football — rather than as a form of health care that saves lives.” [Media Matters, 9/01/21, 12/04/21, 5/3/22]