Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb hailed the Respect for Marriage Act signed into law Tuesday by President Joe Biden.
“This was a historic, bipartisan effort that reaffirms that Americans should have the right to marry the person they love,” Kleeb said. “Unfortunately, Republican Sens. Deb Fischer and Ben Sasse and Reps. Mike Flood and Adrian Smith could not get behind that effort. They should be ashamed.”
Background:
The measure requires all states to recognize same-sex marriages, a relief for hundreds of thousands of couples who have married since the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision that legalized those marriages nationwide.
The bipartisan legislation, which passed the House 258-169, also protects interracial unions by requiring states to recognize legal marriages regardless of “sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin.”
The measure gathered momentum following the Supreme Court’s June decision that overturned the federal right to an abortion, a ruling that included a concurring opinion from conservative Justice Clarence Thomas that suggested same-sex marriage rights were wrongly decided.
