Yahoo News Presidential Candidate Vivek Ramaswamy Names Ted Cruz as a Potential Supreme Court Pick
Weeks after the Supreme Court overturned 'Roe v. Wade' in 2022, Sen. Cruz said he believes the court should also reconsider 'Obergefell v. Hodges,' which legalized same-sex marriage
Conservative entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said this week that, if elected in 2024, he'd consider Texas Sen. Ted Cruz for a seat on the Supreme Court.
Ramaswamy, 37, wrote in a tweet that Cruz has a record of "[fighting] for the Constitution and against left-radical court-packing," and is a "champion of religious liberty."
Cruz, a former attorney who clerked for Chief Justice William Rehnquist from 1996 to 1997, has offered some clues to how he would rule as a Supreme Court justice. Last July, weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Cruz said he believes the court should reconsider another landmark case: Obergefell v. Hodges, which legalized same-sex marriage.
Speaking on his podcast, Verdict With Ted Cruz, the Republican, 52, said the 2015 case that legalized gay marriage in the U.S. "was clearly wrong when it was decided," adding, "It was the court overreaching."
His belief, Cruz said elsewhere in the podcast, is that the legality of same-sex marriage should be left to the states.
"Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation's history," Cruz said. "Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states. We saw states before Obergefell, some states were moving to allow gay marriage, other states were moving to allow civil partnerships. There were different standards that the states were adopting."
Aside from his Supreme Court stances, Cruz faced sharp backlash in the aftermath of the 2020 presidential race, when he pushed Donald Trump's false claims that the election had been rigged in Joe Biden's favor.
Related: A Brief History of Ted Cruz Fighting with Everyone Else
In Ramaswamy's Monday tweet, he also touted other hard-line Republicans as potential Supreme Court picks, including Utah Sen. Mike Lee and Trump-appointed Judges James Ho, Lawrence VanDyke and Lisa Branch.
Ramaswamy, who is polling well behind GOP front-runner Trump, is the first Republican candidate to share a list of potential Supreme Court and appellate court candidates so far in the 2024 primary race.
Anna Moneymaker/Getty
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy discusses FOIA request regarding former President Donald Trump's June indictmentRamaswamy announced his 2024 bid for the presidency during a February appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight and in a subsequent Wall Street Journal editorial.
"To put America first, we need to rediscover what America is. That's why I am running for president," Ramaswamy wrote in his op-ed. "I am launching not only a political campaign but a cultural movement to create a new American Dream — one that is not only about money but about the unapologetic pursuit of excellence."
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Ramaswamy has been outspoken against companies using their platforms for social causes and has echoed the views of many far-right Republicans that America's values are in decline, citing critical race theory, self-victimization, and efforts to stop climate change as things that have destroyed the nation's once-shared identity.
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