A group comprising the brightest legal minds of America have come out with a major challenge to the US Supreme Court regarding the highly controversial landmark decision it rendered on June 26 this year legalising same-sex marriage throughout the United States.

In their joint statement issued through the non-profit organisation American Principles Project, America's top legal scholars urged all state and federal officials to treat the Supreme Court's recent creation of "same-sex marriage" as "anti-constitutional and illegitimate," according to the WND news website.

"We call on all federal and state officeholders: To refuse to accept Obergefell as binding precedent for all but the specific plaintiffs in that case. To recognize the authority of states to define marriage, and the right of federal and state officeholders to act in accordance with those definitions. To pledge full and mutual legal and political assistance to anyone who refuses to follow Obergefell for constitutionally protected reasons. To open forthwith a broad and honest conversation on the means by which Americans may constitutionally resist and overturn the judicial usurpations evidence in Obergefell," the joint statement said.

Obergefell refers to James Obergefell, one of several plaintiffs who sought a Supreme Court ruling on their separate cases involving their disputed same-sex marriages. The Supreme lumped the cases together and ruled—by a narrow 5-4 majority vote—that the fundamental right to marry is guaranteed to same-sex couples by both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The Supreme Court ruling established a new civil right and handed gay rights advocates in the US a historic victory.

However, Robert George, founder of the American Principles Project and a professor of jurisprudence at Princeton, said the US Constitution "is not whatever a majority of Supreme Court justices say it is."

He reminded all federal and state officials that "they are pledged to uphold the Constitution of the United States, not the will of five members of the Supreme Court."

In their joint statement, the lawyers quoted Abraham Lincoln, the 16th US president, who said in his inaugural address that depending solely on the Supreme Court as a final arbiter would mean that "people will have ceased to be their own rulers."

The lawyers explained further that the five justices who voted to create "same-sex marriage," "by their own admission, can find no warrant for their ruling in the text, logic, structure or original understanding of the Constitution."

The majority justices "supplied no compelling reasoning to show why it is unjustified for the laws of the states to sustain marriage as it has been understood for millennia as the union of husband and wife," the lawyers said.

They also pointed out that the four justices who dissented did not simply disagree with their colleagues but expressed fear on the damage they have just done to American democracy.

Justice Antonin Scalia, one of the dissenters, called the majority vote "a naked judicial claim to legislative ... power; a claim fundamentally at odds with our system of government."

Justice Samuel Alito, another dissenter, underscored that it is "beyond dispute that the right to same-sex marriage is not among ... rights" rooted in the nation's history and tradition.

In their statement, the lawyers said the Supreme Court decision ought to be regarded as "anti-constitutional and illegitimate" by the other branches of government and by the American citizens.

Those who signed the statement are all considered legal experts in their respective fields. Their names along with their affiliations are listed online.

They include John C. Eastman of Chapman, Matthew J. Franck of the Witherspoon Institute, Stephen H. Balch of Texas Tech, Paul Moreno of Hillsdale, Lucas E. Morel of Washington and Lee, Wm. Barclay Allen of Michigan State, Scott FitzGibbon of Boston College, Watler Schumm of Kansas State, Michael D. Breidenbach of Ave Maria, Daniel Robinson of Oxford, Colleen Sheehan of Villanova and Carol M. Swain of Vanderbilt.