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Pam Bondi promises to 'respect the law' on marriage equality in Senate confirmation hearing

Pam Bondi
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Former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing to be the next U.S. attorney general in the Hart Senate Office Building on Capitol Hill on January 15, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Bondi, nominated to be the next attorney general, made the comment after California Sen. Adam Schiff, a Democrat, asked if she would defend the marriage of LGBTQ+ couples.


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Attorney General nominee Pam Bondi told the U.S. Senate Wednesday she will respect marriage equality protections in U.S. law.

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California Sen. Adam Schiff questioned Bondi during a Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing and asked President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department whether she would defend LGBTQ+ individual’s marital unions.

The Democrat called the matter an issue “important to a great many Californians and people around the country.”

“Will you respect their marriage?” Schiff said. “Will you respect marriage equality?”

“I will respect the law,” Bondi responded. “Absolutely.”



The response was especially important considering Moody’s record as Florida Attorney General, an office she held from 2011 to 2019. During her tenure, Moody defended a state ban on same-sex marriages, even campaigning in 2014 that she was “just getting started” on defending marriage discrimination.

Her office appealed court rulings for years after judges said the state language violated LGBTQ citizens’ civil rights, going as far as petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upholding lower court decisions. She ultimately abandoned efforts only after the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in 2015 that established marriage equality as the law of the land in all 50 states.

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Through the process, Bondi maintained it was her job as Florida’s top legal officer to defend the state statute and the Florida constitution, which voters had amended in 2008 to enshrine marriage as the exclusive province of one man and one woman.

In that sense, Bondi’s answers in her confirmation hearings were consistent. President Joe Biden in 2022 signed the Respect for Marriage Act, which provides federal protection of marriage equality.

But with Republicans in control of both chambers of Congress and soon the White House, some conservative groups are already plotting to unravel the federal law and challenge marriage equality in court in hopes a new conservative majority issues a different ruling. For example, Michigan state Rep. Josh Schriver just last month said he wants his state to “make gay marriage illegal again.”

Bondi was also questioned about whether she would work on gun laws, and notably raised her own record responding to Florida mass shootings. She was the state’s attorney general during both the Parkland school shooting that prompted a youth movement for gun control and the Pulse shooting where an ISIS sympathizer killed 49 mostly queer and Latino victims in an Orlando gay club.

During the response to the Pulse shooting, CNN’s Anderson Cooper famously pressed Bondi on her poor record on marriage equality. Bondi at the time claimed her office had " rushed to get it (the case) to the Supreme Court" but said that shouldn’t reflect her office had any animosity to LGBTQ victims of the shooting.

While Bondi in her confirmation hearing stressed she was a vocal supporter of Second Amendment rights, she told California Sen. Alex Padilla she would be happy to review any legislation his office produced on implementing background checks or on national red flags modeled after those in Florida. Importantly, Bondi’s office defended Florida’s Parkland gun control bill when the National Rifle Association sued the state. Courts upheld the law after she left office in 2020.

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