In Brief

Staff Reports

Federal Judge In New York City Rules DOMA Unconstitutional; Attempts To Define Marriage “Intrudes Upon The State’s Business Of Regulating Domestic Relations”

NEW YORK, NY -- U.S. District Court Judge Barbara Jones in Manhattan added herself to a growing list of federal judges across the nation Wednesday by ruling that a key component of the Defense of Marriage Act,(DOMA) unfairly discriminates barring access to federal benefits to couples in a same-sex marriage.

Jones said DOMA's efforts to define marriage "intrude upon the states' business of regulating domestic relations." She added that "that incursion skirts important principles of federalism and therefore cannot be legitimate, in this court's view."

She also added that the DOMA law fails because "it tries to re-examine states' decisions concerning same sex marriage." She said such a sweeping review interferes with a system of government that places matters at the core of the domestic relations law exclusively within the province of the states.

The ruling came in a case brought by Edith Windsor, a woman whose partner died in 2009, two years after they married each other in Canada. Windsor brought the lawsuit after her late spouse, Thea Spyer, passed her estate to Windsor. Because of the federal law, Windsor did not qualify for the unlimited marital deduction and was required to pay $363,053 in federal estate tax on Spyer's estate. Windsor sued the government in November 2010. As part of her ruling, Jones ordered the government to pay Windsor the money she had paid in estate tax. 

Reaction from LGBT Advocacy groups praised Judge Jones' ruling. Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese released the following statement in response to the decision:

“The dominoes continue to fall on DOMA with yet another federal court rightly calling it unconstitutional. All loving and committed married couples should be recognized by the federal government yet we continue to see the terrible pain DOMA inflicts on real families. The real question is when Speaker Boehner will see the writing on the wall and stop wasting taxpayer dollars defending this outrageous law and instead work to repeal it. Paul Clement’s record of zero for four speaks for itself. 

“We applaud the ACLU and Edie Windsor, as well as the attorneys at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, for their incredible efforts on behalf of gay and lesbian couples across the nation and are confident that one day soon families will no longer have to live under the burden of this onerous law.”

The American Civil Liberties Union included comments from Windsor in its release. "It's thrilling to have a court finally recognize how unfair it is for the government to have treated us as though we were strangers," Windsor said of her 44-year relationship with Spyer. James Esseks, director of the ACLU Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Project, said the ruling "adds to what has become an avalanche of decisions that DOMA can't survive even the lowest level of scrutiny by the courts." The ruling came just days after a federal appeals court in Boston found the law's denial of federal benefits to same sex couples unconstitutional.

Currently, six states and the District of Columbia allow same-sex couples to marry. This year, legislatures in Maryland and Washington State approved marriage equality laws, but they are not yet in effect and are likely to be subject to popular referenda.
Under the 1996 law, the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), even lawfully-married couples cannot be recognized by the federal government, and as a result are denied access to more than 1,100 rights, benefits and responsibilities under federal law. These include Social Security survivor benefits, federal employee health benefits for spouses, protections against spouses losing their homes in cases of severe medical emergencies, the right to sponsor a foreign born partner for immigration, the guarantee of family and medical leave and the ability to file joint tax returns, among many others.

Washington Same-Sex Marriage Law Blocked As Anti-Gay Opponents Submit Enough Signatures For Ballot Referendum

OLYMPIA, WA -- Opponents of Washington’s newly passed same-sex marriage law on Wednesday submitted an estimated 232,000 signatures to the Secretary of State- all but guaranteeing that the question of whether gays can marry in Washington will now be decided by that state's voters. 

Preserve Marriage Washington, the petition campaign's sponsors, planned to bring in an additional 9,000 more signatures by the close of business today. The number of signatures Preserve Marriage Washington gathered for Referendum 74 far exceeds the minimum 120,577 the campaign needs to qualify the measure for the November ballot, and is well above the 150,000 that the Washington secretary of state’s office recommended that the referendum campaign submit in order to provide a cushion for invalid or duplicate signatures. The validity of signatures will be tested by the Secretary of State's Elections Division.

Preserve Marriage Washington had submitted the signatures just one day before the state's new law allowing same-sex marriage was slated to take effect.

“The current definition of marriage works and has worked,” said Joseph Backholm, the chair of Preserve Marriage Washington, as he stood next to stacked boxes of petitions. Backholm also raised an alarm over the possibility that allowing same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy and marriage within families. He said the law would redefine marriage as it’s been known for generations and suggested a possible slippery slope to other types of marriage. “We have to think about the precedent we’re creating,” he said.

Washington Governor Chris Gregoire signed into law the measure passed in February by the state legislature that legalized same-sex that made Washington the seventh state to allow legal same-sex marriages.

Approval of Ref. 74 in November means same-sex partners would be allowed to legally wed. 

And while rejection of the measure would repeal the law, Peter Nicolas, law professor at the UW, said there's nothing preventing the Legislature from bringing up the issue again in the next session. 

Washington is likely to be one of four states with a same-sex marriage measure question on the ballot in this presidential election year, with every effort in each of those states backed by the National Organization for Marriage. 

Washington has had domestic partnership laws since 2007, and in 2009, passed an “everything but marriage” expansion of that law, which was ultimately upheld by voters after a referendum challenge. ~ The Seattle Times

A recent poll by a Seattle consulting firm Strategies 360 showed that 54-percent of voters think it should be legal for same sex couples to get married, though the poll didn’t specifically ask them how they would vote on a referendum.

Across the nation, in Maryland, opponents of same-sex marriage have turned in more than enough signatures to allow that state's voters to decide whether to retain or reject same-sex legislation passed earlier this year. In Maine, LGBTQ equality rights advocates are asking voters, who repealed a same-sex marriage law in that state in 2009, to restore it. And in Minnesota, voters will consider whether to ban gay marriage in their state's constitution -- in similar fashion to a constitutional ban that voters in North Carolina approved last month.