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Ted Cruz on same-sex marriage, health care: Supreme Court violated its oath

White House hopeful Ted Cruz believes Supreme Court judges who voted in favor same-sex marriage and national health care "rewrote the Constitution," he said Monday on TODAY.
/ Source: TODAY

White House hopeful Ted Cruz believes Supreme Court judges who voted in favor same-sex marriage and national health care “rewrote the Constitution,” he said Monday on TODAY.

“What happened last week is twice, back-to-back, the U.S. Supreme Court — a majority of the justices violated their judicial oath,” the Texas senator told Savannah Guthrie.

“What we saw instead is five unelected lawyers saying the views of 320 Americans don’t matter because they’re going to enforce their own policies.”

Last Friday, the Supreme Court ruled to legalize same-sex marriage throughout the country. A day earlier, the High Court upheld the Affordable Health Care Act, also known as Obamacare.

Cruz, a Harvard grad, criticized the Supreme Court justices as a group of “elites” from Harvard or Yale who lack religious diversity.

“They think that our views are simply parochial and don’t deserve to be respected,” he said. He said it was a point amplified by Justice Antonin Scalia, who dissented in both cases: “What a crazy system to have the most important issues of our day decided by unelected lawyers.”

Over the weekend, Cruz said he would support Texas state clerks who refused to issue marriage licenses to gay couples because of religious objections. Asked if that would be the same as refusing to issue a marriage license to an interracial couple, Cruz disagreed. “There’s no religious backing for that.”

Several critics have compared the gay marriage issue to the Supreme Court’s decision in Loving v. Virginia, a case that made it illegal for couples of two separate races to be married. But Cruz said the case doesn’t apply because three amendments to the Constitution ensure “everyone has equal rights regardless of race.”