Washington — Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that the Supreme Court “should not be imposing its own values on the American people,” as the high court faces a longshot bid to revisit its decade-old landmark ruling legalizing same-sex marriage.
In her first television interview since joining the Supreme Court in October 2020, Barrett told CBS News senior correspondent Norah O’Donnell that she wants Americans to “understand the law,” which she said is “not just an opinion poll” based on the views of the court’s nine justices.
“You know, what the court is trying to do is see what the American people have decided. And sometimes the American people have expressed themselves in the Constitution itself, which is our fundamental law. Sometimes in statutes,” she said. “But the court should not be imposing its own values on the American people. That’s for the democratic process.”
Barrett spoke with O’Donnell ahead of the release of her book, “Listening to the Law: Reflections on the Court and Constitution,” which hits shelves Sept. 9. At 53, she is the youngest member of the Supreme Court and could serve for decades. Barrett was appointed to the high court by President Trump during his first term, filling the seat held by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg until her death in September 2020, just weeks before the presidential election.
Months after Barrett was confirmed by the Senate and sworn in as a justice, the Supreme Court agreed to decide whether to reverse Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that established the constitutional right to an abortion. The Supreme Court ultimately overturned that ruling in June 2022, leaving decisions about abortion access to the states. Since then, more than 20 states have restricted access to the procedure.
Barrett was in the five-justice majority that voted to overturn Roe, and the decision raised concerns from critics that other precedents grounded in the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause — namely those legalizing same-sex marriage and establishing the right to contraception — would be at risk of falling next.
Bolstering those fears was a concurring opinion authored by Justice Clarence Thomas, which no other justice joined, in which he said the Supreme Court should reconsider those decisions.
But Justice Brett Kavanaugh also addressed precedents involving contraception and gay marriage in his own solo concurring opinion, writing that “overruling Roe does not mean the overruling of those precedents, and does not threaten or cast doubt on those precedents.”
Barrett wrote in her book “the court has held that the rights to marry, engage in sexual intimacy, use birth control, and raise children are fundamental, but the rights to do business, commit suicide, and obtain abortion are not.”
The Supreme Court has been asked to overturn its 2015 ruling that recognized the constitutional right to same-sex marriage, Obergefell v. Hodges, in a case brought by Kim Davis, a former county clerk in Kentucky who stopped issuing marriage licenses on the heels of that decision 10 years ago.
Davis’s appeal faces long odds at the court. Whether to overturn Obergefell is one of three questions raised by Davis in her petition, and it’s unclear whether there are four votes to reconsider the decision and five to overturn it.
Still, some Democrats have suggested that the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, could dismantle the constitutional right to same-sex marriage.
“My prediction is they will do to gay marriage what they did to abortion — they will send it back to the states,” former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said during a podcast interview with Jessica Tarlov, a co-host on Fox News’ “The Five.”
Barrett, though, rebuffed Clinton’s prediction.
“I think people who criticize the court or who are outside say a lot of different things. But again, the point that I make in the book is that we have to tune those things out,” she said.
Watch more of O’Donnell’s interview on “CBS Sunday Morning” at 9 a.m. Sunday on CBS or at 11 a.m. on CBS News 24/7.
