Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, the devout Catholic conservative who has long warned of animus against religion in America, says in a new book that he believes the court’s landmark decision extending marriage rights to same-sex couples was “perhaps the decisive point in our nation’s turn against religious liberty.”

Alito, who dissented sharply in the 2015 case, made the claim at Catholic University of America three years after Obergefell v Hodges in a speech that was not open to the public or widely covered at the time. The remarks were published this month in “So Ordered,” a collection of Alito speeches that he says reflect his judicial philosophy and outlook on the country.

“In dissent from that ruling,” he said in the 2018 address, “I expressed my worry that equating the expression of certain views with bigotry — or, if you like, with dignitary harm — would drive believers out of public life.”

Alito suggests that his prediction has come to pass.

“Quite suddenly, religious liberty has become controversial,” Alito said in a newly published 2022 speech to the Magnificat Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to promoting Catholic culture and traditions.

Throughout the book, the justice cites a string of lawsuits to reach the Supreme Court in recent years as evidence that “support for religious liberty has cratered.”

The cases involve businesses threatened with punishment for refusing to provide services for gay weddings and faith-based organizations harmed by government health or employment regulations without any religious exemption.

“What we see in these and other cases,” Alito says in the 2022 speech, “is a refusal to live in peace with those who violate the new moral code.” He says the dynamic will “virtually guarantee that the Supreme Court will continue to see a steady stream of religious-liberty cases.”

Court sided with religiously affiliated parties

In nearly all the cases Alito cites as examples of religious animus, the court ultimately sided with the religiously affiliated parties over their opponents.

The court ruled in favor of a Colorado baker who was sued for refusing to create a wedding cake for a gay couple and later defended a Christian wedding website designer who objected to creating sites for same-sex ceremonies.

When the Affordable Care Act mandated that employers provide insurance plans with no-cost contraceptive coverage, the high court ruled that some private employers can opt-out as a matter of faith and that federal agencies must be allowed to exempt religious employers from the rule.

The court recently ruled that states must allow religiously affiliated private schools to participate in state-funded private tuition programs and tax credit initiatives. Last year, it gave parents the right to opt-out their kids from teachings that conflict with sincere religious beliefs.

The conservative majority blocked a bid by the city of Philadelphia to exclude Catholic Social Services from its foster care program over LGBT discrimination and later effectively struck down state laws banning LGBT conversion therapy, which some religious advocates said amounted to a gag order against Christian teaching about human sexuality.

Recent decisions have also expanded protection for religious exercise on the job — siding with a former public school football coach who had been disciplined for praying at midfield after games — and mandated broader employer accommodations for the faithful who need to skip work to attend worship services.

Alito joined the majority in all of those cases and has voted in favor of faith-based interests in many others over his 20 years on the high court.

Same-sex marriage remains a flashpoint

The issue of same-sex marriage rights, which was narrowly decided 5-4, remains a flashpoint.

In 2025, Alito said publicly that while he strongly opposes the ruling, he is “not suggesting that the decision should be overruled,” even as fellow conservative Justice Clarence Thomas has openly urged his colleagues to do so.

Nevertheless, Alito suggests in his book that the marriage decision has effectively silenced Americans whose sincere religious beliefs favor limiting unions to one man and one woman, likening them to Catholics who were sidelined in post-Reformation England.

They “had been so beaten down that they were ‘a people who shunned the light of day.’ They were ‘found in corners, and alleys, and cellars, and the housetops, or in the recesses of the country,'” he said in a newly-published speech delivered in 2021 at Thomas Aquinas College.

“What I predicted in my dissent is coming to pass,” Alito said of same-sex marriage opponents.

Some advocates see differently than Alito

While many religious liberty advocates openly share Alito’s concerns, some have voiced a different view of the current state of affairs.

“We continue to win unparalleled court victories at every level of the judiciary furthering the religious liberty of all Americans, resulting in more religious freedom today than at any other time in our lives,” wrote Jeff Mateer, executive vice president and chief operating and legal officer of First Liberty Institute in the group’s 2025 annual report. The nonprofit group calls itself the “nation’s largest legal advocacy firm dedicated to defending religious liberty” and frequently brings cases to the high court.

The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, another high profile nonprofit religious advocacy group, says in its 2025 report on religious freedom in America that “faith in the public square is on the rise.” “Americans are moving away from a timid, behind-closed-doors view of religious freedom,” Becket found.

One of six Catholic justices on the current court, Alito, who calls freedom of religion a “pet issue,” concedes the legal victories for religious exercise rights but maintains a critical view of threats to people of faith.

“It says a lot that the parties whose free-exercise rights were violated had to take their claims all the way to our Court,” he said at the 2021 event.

The book also highlights the justice’s views on originalism and textualism; the role of judges in American life; and what he calls “threats” to the Constitution.