Justice Anthony Kennedy’s memoir, “Life, Law & Liberty: A Memoir,” scheduled for publication on October 14, 2025, offers a rare window into the personal and professional moments that defined his three decades on the Supreme Court. Yet, as Kennedy’s recollections come to light, the legacy of one of his most consequential decisions—Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage nationwide—faces renewed scrutiny. The Supreme Court is now considering whether to revisit the landmark 2015 ruling, following a petition filed earlier this year by Kentucky county clerk Kim Davis, who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples on religious grounds.
In his memoir, Kennedy, appointed by President Ronald Reagan and often described as the Court’s pivotal swing justice, recounts his final, unexpectedly tender encounter with Justice Antonin Scalia. In February 2016, just a week before Scalia’s sudden death during a hunting trip in Texas, Scalia visited Kennedy’s chambers to apologize for his sharp dissent in Obergefell. “The visit became a pleasure, even a landmark, for both of us,” Kennedy writes, describing how the meeting ended with an uncharacteristic hug between the two justices.
Scalia’s widow, Maureen, later told Kennedy that her husband was “happier than he had been in months” after their conversation. “He told me it was because of your conversation together. He was still excited and joyous when he left for the trip. Thank you,” Kennedy recalls her saying. Reflecting on their relationship, Kennedy writes, “Nino and I spent twenty-eight years on the Court together. We sometimes agreed and sometimes disagreed, but I respected him and miss him very much.” For Kennedy, the episode underscores a lesson: “If friendships are slipping away, we must renew them soon, lest time does not permit us to celebrate them for long.”
While Kennedy’s memoir provides anecdotes—such as a practical joke by Chief Justice John Roberts on Scalia, or the saga of repairing the Supreme Court’s basketball court after a series of injuries (including Justice Clarence Thomas arriving on crutches)—it’s the shadow of Obergefell that now looms large over the Court’s docket and the broader American culture war.
In July 2025, Kim Davis filed a formal request asking the Supreme Court to overturn Obergefell, arguing that the ruling’s “legal fiction of substantive due process” should be reversed. The petition follows years of legal battles; in March, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a judgment requiring Davis to pay $100,000 in emotional damages and $260,000 in legal fees to a gay couple denied a marriage license. Davis’ previous appeal to the Supreme Court in 2020 focused on qualified immunity, but this time, the petition directly targets the foundational precedent of same-sex marriage rights.
The Supreme Court receives between 7,000 and 8,000 petitions each year but hears fewer than 100. Four justices must agree to hear a case, and five are needed to overturn a precedent. Despite the buzz, many legal experts remain skeptical that Davis’ petition will succeed. “The petition is nonsense and stands no chance of being granted,” Ilya Shapiro, director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “There are not five votes to overturn Obergefell and even if there were, there’s no way that the Court would use this case to do it.”
Still, some conservative voices are hopeful. At the National Conservative Conference’s “Overturn Obergefell” panel, Katie Faust, founder of Them Before Us, argued that the ruling had upended children’s rights. “We can either recognize gay marriage, or we can recognize a child’s right to their mother and father. We can’t do both,” Faust said. Others on the panel, like Jeff Shafer of the Hale Institute, called for conservatism to commit to “removing this poison from our law.” Such rhetoric, once fringe even within conservative circles, has gained traction. As Andrew T. Walker of the Ethics and Public Policy Center noted, “A panel discussion on the topic would have been ‘unthinkable’ five years ago, when ‘most mainstream conservative organizations wouldn’t broach the subject.’ But people kept making the arguments, so here we are.”
The cultural and legal context has shifted in other ways, too. According to a May 2025 Pew Research poll, public support for gay marriage remains robust at 68%, though support among Republicans has dropped by 14% since 2022. Meanwhile, a 2024 Gallup poll found that 23% of Generation Z identifies as something other than heterosexual, reflecting the rapid growth of the LGBTQ movement. The Supreme Court itself has recently ruled in favor of states banning transgender procedures for minors and is set to consider cases on banning men from women’s sports in the upcoming 2025-2026 term.
Several states have taken legislative action to challenge Obergefell. In January, Idaho’s House passed a resolution calling on the Supreme Court to reconsider the ruling; North Dakota lawmakers did the same in February, though the measure was rejected in the state Senate. The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation’s largest Protestant denomination, voted in June 2025 to call for a reversal of Obergefell—a first for the organization. These moves reflect a growing, if still minority, movement among conservatives to revisit same-sex marriage rights at the highest judicial level.
Yet, the legal pathway to overturning Obergefell remains steep. As Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, explained to the Daily Caller News Foundation, “You would need some local government to deny marriage licenses, or marital benefits to a same-sex couple. Then the lower courts would be required to follow Obergefell and find the government acted unlawfully. At that point, you would need four Justices who are willing to grant cert and reverse Obergefell. I see that as very unlikely.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, however, has signaled openness to reconsidering the precedent. In his Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concurrence, Thomas suggested that Obergefell should be reconsidered, though the majority opinion in Dobbs explicitly stated that nothing in its opinion “should be understood to cast doubt on precedents that do not concern abortion.” Chief Justice Roberts, for his part, dissented in Obergefell, calling the majority’s decision “an act of will, not legal judgment”—the only dissent he has ever read from the bench. Whether Roberts or any other justices would support a reversal, given their commitment to stare decisis and the institutional stability of the Court, remains uncertain.
For now, the odds remain long. As Walter Olson of the Cato Institute observed, while the legal right spent decades building momentum to overturn Roe v. Wade, “There is no comparable head of steam on Obergefell, or really any head of steam at all.” Even among conservatives, the cultural “vibe shift” is more a ripple than a tidal wave.
Still, as Kennedy’s memoir and the current legal debates make clear, the story of Obergefell is far from settled—either in the courts or in the hearts and minds of Americans. The next chapter, it seems, will be written not just in legal briefs, but in the lived experiences and evolving values of a nation still grappling with the meaning of liberty, equality, and the rule of law.
