??The 1st Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals has found the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. The court found DOMA to be unconstitutional in the two cases before it: Gil. v. Office Management and Massachusetts v. United States Department of Health and Human Services (Boston Globe).
The law made it so that no state would be made to accept with full force and credit a same-sex marriage valid in another state. It also denied same-sex married couples federal benefits otherwise afforded married couples.
As a route to the Supreme Court was something that the law's backers have wanted since the Obama Administration opted to stop defending the law last year, the court has stayed the ruling in the face of certain appeal to the Supreme Court. As there are multiple challenges to the law in various other districts, the court is almost certain to take up the issue, possibly as early as the next court calendar.
The court did not take up the "full faith and credit" issue and only addressed the obvious inequity in how same sex couples are treated as compared to heterosexual couples. In fact, in New York, Windsor v. United States addresses just that inequity.
In that case, Edith Windsor, the titular plaintiff, was married to Thea Spyer in Toronto in 2007. When Spyer died, Windsor was hit with a massive inheritance tax bill, one that she would never have faced had she been in a heterosexual marriage. It is that inequality that led the court to find that DOMA created an untenable two tier system in how married couples are treated and viewed under the law.
recommend
Facebook
Twitter
bookmark 
print
