WATCH: Ted Cruz Says Supreme Court 'Justices Violated Their Judicial Oath'

Senator Ted Cruz says he believes the Supreme Court justices who voted in favor of same-sex marriage and national health care "rewrote the Constitution."

Dawn Ennis

The Advocate's news editor Dawn Ennis successfully transitioned from broadcast journalism to online media following another transition that made headlines; in 2013, she became the first trans staffer in any major TV network newsroom. As the first out transgender editor at The Advocate, the native New Yorker continues her 30-year media career, in which she has earned more than a dozen awards, including two Emmys. With the blessing of her three children, Dawn retains the most important job title she's ever held: Dad.

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Dawn Ennis

June 29 2015 12:56 PM EST

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November 17 2015 5:28 AM EST

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Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz is raining on the parade of those celebrating Friday's Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage throughout the country, and denouncing the justices for upholding both marriage equality and Obamacare.

"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 NBC's Savannah Guthrie on the Today show. "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."

On June 25, the Supreme Court issued a decision upholding a key provision of President Obama's Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare -- that government subsidies that now make health care affordable for millions of Americans should be available to all. The Supreme Court's justices ruled 6 to 3 in favor of the health care subsidies, then voted 5-4 to legalize marriage equality nationwide just one day later.

Cruz, a graduate of Harvard Law School, 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."