ABSTRACT
In his dissenting opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized same-sex marriage across the nation, Justice Antonin Scalia suggested urban cosmopolitanism has historically been more receptive to liberal sexual attitudes than rural counterparts. He believed the nine-member Court neither represented the mindset nor wishes of much of the U.S. American populace. A defeated Scalia elaborated,
Four of the nine [judges] are natives of New York City. Eight of them grew up in east- and west-coast States. Only one hails from the vast expanse in-between. Not a single South-westerner or even, to tell the truth, a genuine Westerner. (California does not count).
He argued the ruling reflected the “strikingly unrepresentative character” of the nation’s highest court, in large part because of its urban and coastal—and therefore sexually liberal—bias.2