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Written by Lisa Neff, Staff writer
Jul 14, 2010
Take two narrowly defined gay rights cases. Add a conservative judge. The sum is a history-making victory for both same-sex couples and state’s rights – a federal court declaration that a section of the U.S. Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.
U.S. District Court Judge Joseph Tauro on July 9, ruling in two cases from Massachusetts, doomed a section of DOMA as motivated by “irrational prejudice.”
Tauro’s rulings are “confirmation of what every lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender American knows to be a basic truth – we and our families, are equal,” said Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest LGBT group.
The rulings create a dilemma for the U.S. Justice Department, which has yet to announce whether it will appeal to the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. Justice is responsible for defending Congress’s acts, but the current administration maintains that DOMA is discriminatory and should be repealed.
DOMA became law with the signature of Bill Clinton in 1996, when it seemed that Hawaii might soon legalize same-sex civil marriages, a first in the United States.
The GOP-dominated Congress had crafted DOMA to carve out an exemption to the U.S. Constitution’s full faith and credit clause, wanting to allow one state to refuse to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state.
Another element of DOMA defined marriage, for federal purposes, as the union of a man and a woman. The result of this provision is that gay couples legally married in five states and the District of Columbia are denied the more than 1,100 federal benefits and responsibilities tied to marriage, including Social Security survivor benefits, family and medical leave, equal compensation as federal employees and immigration rights.
Tauro’s rulings dealt with a challenge to DOMA from Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley called Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. Health and Human Services and another challenge to the law from Gay & Lesbian Advocates and Defenders called Gill v. Office of Personnel Management.
“It is … unconstitutional for the federal government to decide who is married and to create a system of first- and second-class marriages,” Coakley said. “The federal government cannot require states, such as Massachusetts, to further the discrimination through federal programs.”
In the state’s case, Coakley alleged that Section 3 of DOMA unlawfully creates separate and unequal categories of married individuals in Massachusetts and that DOMA unlawfully requires Massachusetts to disregard valid marriages in its implementation of federally funded programs.
In GLAD’s case, attorneys alleged that Section 3 of DOMA violates the federal constitutional guarantee of equal protection as applied to federal income tax, Social Security, federal employees and retirees and the issuance of passports.
Tauro, appointed to the federal bench by Richard Nixon in 1972, wrote that lawmakers clearly passed Section 3 of DOMA “for the one purpose that lies entirely outside of legislative bounds, to disadvantage a group of which it disapproves. And such a classification, the Constitution clearly will not permit.”
GLAD civil rights project director Mary Bonauto said, “The court simply affirmed that our country won’t tolerate second-class marriages. This ruling will make a real difference for countless families in Massachusetts.”
Gay civil rights advocates called the rulings historic but narrow, applying only to Massachusetts.
“This is an important step forward, but there is a long path ahead before we see this discriminatory law consigned to the dustbin of history,” Solmonese said.
“We believe this is the first of many federal court rulings, coupled with anticipated movement on federal legislation, that will slowly dismantle the system of laws preventing same-sex couples access to the same rights and protections afforded all other people,” said Molly McKay of Marriage Equality USA.
R. Clarke Cooper of Log Cabin Republicans celebrated Tauro’s rulings as a victory not only for gay equality, but also for state’s rights. Section 3 of DOMA is “an unprecedented intrusion by the federal government upon the right of states to make their own decisions about what makes a marriage,” Cooper said. “As conservatives and federalists, Log Cabin Republicans support this ruling. In addition to being a victory for equality, it is a much-needed reminder to Washington that the powers of the federal government are, indeed, limited.”
It wasn’t lost on LCR members that the rulings in the marriage cases go to a central tenet of Tea Party activists bemoaning the expanded role of federal government.
Still to come from a federal trial court is a decision in the widely covered case challenging the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8, the voter-approved amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman and prohibiting same-sex civil marriage.
The California case, Perry v. Schwarzenegger, alleges that Prop 8 violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Closing arguments were made earlier this summer, and a decision could come at any time and likely would be far-reaching.
And still to come in Massachusetts is a decision from the Justice Department on whether it will appeal Tauro’s rulings in the next two months. In the days following the rulings, Justice was silent on the issue, as was the White House.
But parties on both sides of the issue were not silent.
Gay rights activists have mounted a campaign calling for the Justice Department to let the rulings stand, though some have noted that Tauro’s rulings might have more impact if upheld on appeal by the nation’s highest court – the U.S. Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, anti-gay marriage activists have said Tauro’s rulings are the result of a weak defense from a reluctant Obama administration. “It’s not surprising that this judge got it wrong, because a sham defense was put up by the Obama Justice Department,” said Maggie Gallagher, chair of the National Organization for Marriage.
