Should Idaho ask Supreme Court to overturn gay marriage? This legislator says yes
An Idaho lawmaker brought a memorial Monday urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn its 2015 decision legalizing gay marriage.
But even if the Supreme Court were to undo that ruling, it’s unclear how quickly that would affect Idaho. The Gem State has recognized same-sex marriages since the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals struck down the state’s ban on gay marriage in 2014, nine months before the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case.
The memorial’s sponsor, Rep. Tony Wisniewski, R-Post Falls, told the Statesman he was not a lawyer and couldn’t say.
“Several states’ view of marriage superseded other states’ definition of marriage and brought everybody down to a common denominator,” Wisniewski told the House State Affairs Committee on Monday morning. “The ultimate issue here is that this is an area best left to the states.”
The memorial also said that the Legislature “rejects the Obergefell decision” and called the ruling an “illegitimate overreach.” A successful memorial is an expression of the Legislature’s view but has no impact on law.
The decision got its name from Ohio man James Obergefell, who with his dying husband John Arthur sued for their marriage to be recognized on Arthur’s death certificate, according to the ACLU of Ohio.
The couple had married two years before in Maryland but Ohio prohibited gay marriage. Another couple in Ohio plus couples in three other states also sued to force states to recognize their marriages, list them as parents on their kids’ birth certificates and allow them to adopt children, according to Justia, a legal database.
The Supreme Court decided 5-4 that marriage was a fundamental liberty that extended to gay Americans under the 14th Amendment, according to Oyez, a Supreme Court database.
In the past 30 years, popular support for gay marriage has soared. In 2024, close to 70% of people said they supported legal gay marriage in a Gallup poll. Public opinion polling in Idaho is hard to come by but a 2022 Statesman poll showed 49% supported legal same-sex marriage in Idaho.
In 2023, 386 same-sex or partner-and-partner couples married out of almost 14,000 Idaho marriages, according to the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare.
However, there has been a nationwide backsliding on LGBTQ+ issues as President Donald Trump has rolled back diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, in his 2022 abortion case opinion, wrote that the court should reconsider the decision that legalized gay marriage, among others.
The Idaho bill is essentially a rerun of a memorial brought by Rep. Heather Scott, R-Blanchard, in 2025. A quarter of House Republicans voted against that legislation and it did not move forward in the Senate. Scott brought her bill in partnership with MassResistance, an organization that has a long history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights.
Wisniewski told the Statesman that MassResistance contacted him but that he “had not contacted them on purpose.”
“I’m not sure that we necessarily need to have this memorial, because we already have it in our state constitution,” said Rep. Stephanie Mickelsen, R-Idaho Falls.
The House State Affairs committee introduced the bill with a small change.
In the hallway outside the committee room, a woman came up to Wisniewski. She showed him her phone, saying: “is this next? Is this what you’re going to go for next?” She walked away before Wisniewski had a chance to respond.
Wisniewski said the phone showed Loving v. Virginia, a 1967 case that allowed interracial marriage. Wisniewski told the Statesman that he supported interracial marriage and that the color of one’s skin doesn’t change “the dignity of a human being.”
“People are people,” he said.
This story was originally published February 23, 2026 at 2:36 PM.
