Obergefell v. Hodges’s Empirical Analysis
576 U.S. 644 · 2015
Citation profile
47 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 101 later decisions (15 by the Supreme Court) — most recently March 2026 · most notably Bostock v. Clayton County (2020), United States v. Sineneng-Smith (2020)
47 state decisions — followed in 18 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Applies 1 U.S.C. § 7 · 42 U.S.C. § 2000B
Relies on Turner v. Safley · Griswold v. State of Connecticut · Duncan v. State of Louisiana · Meyer v. State of Nebraska · Pierce v. Society of the Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary Same
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 101 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“By straying from the text of the Constitution, substantive due process exalts judges at the expense of the People from whom they derive their authority.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the concurrence“A system of government that makes the People subordinate to a committee of nine unelected lawyers does not deserve to be called a democracy.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent“is a naked judicial claim to legislative—indeed, super-legislative— power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government.”
1 later decision quote this exact passage · from the dissent
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.