Idaho legislator asks U.S. Supreme Court to overturn gay marriage decisionhttps://www.advocate.com/politics/states/idaho-legislator-gay-marriage 🔗Laura Guido (24 Feb 2026)
A North Idaho state legislator is bringing back a request for the nation's high court to overturn its 2015 landmark decision that legalized gay marriage nationwide.
Rep. Tony Wisniewski, R-Post Falls, on Monday introduced a joint memorial that would call on the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, which found that all states must recognize marriages between same-sex couples. Joint memorials don't create new laws, but serve as a joint request from the Idaho Legislature.
The Idaho House of Representatives very early in last year's session approved a very similar memorial in a 46-24 vote, the Idaho Capital Sun previously reported. That memorial did not advance in the Senate.
The U.S. Supreme Court in November had an opportunity to revisit the Obergefell decision amid a challenge to it from former Kentucky clerk Kim Davis who refused to issue same-sex marriage licenses, but the high court declined to take up the case.
During Monday's meeting, Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, made a motion to introduce the bill with the elimination of a sentence that said marriage had been defined as between one man and one woman as "the basis of the United States' Anglo-American legal tradition, for more than 800 years." The committee approved its introduction with this change.
The change came after Rep. Monica Church, D-Boise, expressed concern that support for "Anglo-American legal tradition" included the idea that marriage was "fundamentally about tying a woman to a man because she has no rights as a human-being."