"Justice Scalia served on the Supreme Court for nearly 30 years of our history fighting to make a case for LGBT equality and, during that time, we had several strong disagreements," Davidson said. "Despite his not being a friend to our community or to the causes of racial and reproductive justice, Justice Scalia was a staunch defender of important aspects of the Constitution, especially rights to free speech and against unreasonable search and seizure."
– Jon Davidson, legal director for Lambda Legal
"If I were president now, I would certainly want to try and nominate a justice and I'm sure that, frankly, I'm absolutely sure that President Obama will try and do it. I hope that our Senate is going to be able to … do something about it. This is a tremendous blow to conservatism, a tremendous blow, frankly, to our country. I think it's up to Mitch McConnell and everybody else to stop it. It's called delay, delay, delay."
– Donald Trump
"For almost 30 years, Justice Antonin 'Nino' Scalia was a larger-than-life presence on the bench — a brilliant legal mind with an energetic style, incisive wit and colorful opinions. He influenced a generation of judges, lawyers and students, and profoundly shaped the legal landscape. He will no doubt be remembered as one of the most consequential judges and thinkers to serve on the Supreme Court. Justice Scalia dedicated his life to the cornerstone of our democracy: The rule of law. Tonight, we honor his extraordinary service to our nation and remember one of the towering legal figures of our time."
– President Barack Obama
Excerpts from Scalia's Dissent in Obergefell v. Hodges
"Today's decree says that my Ruler, and the Ruler of 320 million Americans coast-to-coast, is a majority of the nine lawyers on the Supreme Court. The opinion in these cases is the furthest extension in fact — and the furthest extension one can even imagine — of the Court's claimed power to create 'liberties' that the Constitution and its Amendments neglect to mention. This practice of constitutional revision by an unelected committee of nine, always accompanied (as it is today) by extravagant praise of liberty, robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves.
"When the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868, every State limited marriage to one man and one woman, and no one doubted the constitutionality of doing so. That resolves these cases.
"Buried beneath the mummeries and straining-to-be-memorable passages of the opinion is a candid and startling assertion: No matter what it was the People ratified, the 14th Amendment protects those rights that the Judiciary, in its 'reasoned judgment,' thinks the 14th Amendment ought to protect.
"But what really astounds is the hubris reflected in today's judicial Putsch. The five Justices who compose today's majority are entirely comfortable concluding that every State violated the Constitution for all of the 135 years between the 14th Amendment's ratification and Massachusetts' permitting of same-sex marriages in 2003."
