House Democrats file anti-DOMA amicus brief

What is DOMA?
The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) (Pub., 110 Stat. 2419, enacted September 21, 1996, 1 U.S.C. § 7 and 28 U.S.C. § 1738C) is a United States federal law that defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman for federal and inter-state recognition purposes in the United States. The law passed both houses of Congress by large majorities and was signed into law by PresidentBill Clinton on September 21, 1996. Under the law, no U.S. state or political subdivision is required to recognize a same-sex marriage from another state. 

NATIONALGAYANDLESBIANTASKFORCE: More than 140 House Democrats today filed an amicus brief against the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act” (DOMA) to bolster litigation challenging the anti-marriage-equality law. Read more here.

The brief was filed in the case of Edith Schlain Windsor v. United States of America, which has reached the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit following a U.S. District Court ruling that a key section of DOMA is unconstitutional.

Edie Windsor, 83, challenged DOMA in court after the federal government taxed her more than $363,000 when her spouse, Thea Spyer, died in 2009. The couple had married in 2007 after more than 40 years together. When Spyer died, the federal government treated the spouses as strangers due to DOMA, greatly reducing Edie’s inheritance by depriving her of the marital deduction that otherwise allows a married couple to pass property to the surviving spouse without tax penalty.

The Obama administration announced last year that it would no longer defend DOMA, saying the law was unconstitutional. Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) convened an advisory panel to direct the House General Counsel to defend DOMA in court.

Today brief’s addresses how DOMA undermines Congress’s legitimate interests, and says, in part:

It is impossible to believe that any legitimate federal interest is rationally served by depriving a widow like [Edie] Windsor of the marital deduction that allows married couples to pass property to the surviving spouse without penalty, thus maximizing the survivor’s financial well-being.

Read the full brief here.

Task Force Executive Director Rea Carey says:

Brick by brick, the wall of marriage discrimination is coming down. Yet certain members of Congress are doing whatever they can to buttress it. In defending the indefensible DOMA, they play with people’s lives, squander taxpayer dollars, and belittle our country’s deeply held values of freedom and fairness. It is heartening to see the many House members who have instead chosen to support fairness and families over divisiveness and discrimination by signing onto this amicus brief.

House GOP Leadership Appeals DOMA Ruling by Chris Geidner

In a brief filing today in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, the House Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group has announced that it is appealing this week'sdecision in Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management finding that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional.

The appeal sends the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which recentlystruck down Proposition 8 as unconstitutional under limited grounds.

According to today's filing:

Notice is hereby given that Intervenor-Defendant the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives (the "House"), through counsel, respectfully appeals to the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit the District Court's February 22, 2012 Order and final Judgment, both insofar as they grant Plaintiff's motion for summary judgment and deny the House's motion to dismiss.

The statutory basis for this appeal is 28 U.S.C. § 1291. The House hereby notifies the Clerk of Court pursuant to Ninth Circuit Rule 3-1 that it is exempt from submitting the filing fee for this appeal.

The filing also notes, "The Democratic Leader and the Democratic Whip decline to support the filing of this notice of appeal."

Golinski is represented in the challenge, in which she is seeking equal health benefits for her wife, by Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund.

U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White found on Feb. 22 that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to prevent Golinski from receiving equal benefits for her wife, violates Golinski's equal protection guarantee under the U.S. Constitution.

BLAG has retained outside counsel, led by Paul Clement at Bancroft PLLC, to represent it in the case, which it took up following the decision by the Department of Justice and President Obama to stop defending legal challenges to Section 3 of DOMA. DOJ has taken Golinski's side in this challenge, arguing that Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional.

Lambda Legal attorney Tara Borelli said in a statement, "We are confident Judge White's thorough and well-reasoned decision will stand the test of time. However they may recycle their failed arguments on appeal, the one thing we know is: DOMA is doomed, and efforts to extend this discriminatory law, while not unexpected, serve only to harm loving couples and families."

In a statement issued this afternoon, Pelosi spokesman Drew Hammill said, "The District Court in Northern District of California flatly rejected the arguments of Speaker Boehner and his taxpayer-funded lawyers that insulted millions of Americans and their families. The court made it clear that there is no legitimate interest in denying a class of couples the rights and responsibilities guaranteed to married couples under state law."

Referencing Pelosi and other Democrats' stated concerns about the cost of supporting the GOP's defense, Hammill added, "Over the past year, the initial $500,000 in outside legal fees Speaker Boehner plans to spend has tripled to $1.5 million without any vote of the BLAG. That is a tremendous amount of taxpayer money expended, on a purely partisan basis, to defend discrimination. With progress on marriage equality coming from all corners of our country, Speaker Boehner would have been better served and saved taxpayers' money if he had more carefully reviewed the district court's ruling and had declined to file a notice of appeal."

A White House spokesman did not respond to a request for comment on today's filing.

The Ninth Circuit has received the notice of appeal, and has docketed the case as Karen Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management et al., 12-15388.

Source: metroweekly.com

U.S. District Court Judge Rules DOMA Unconstitutional shared by Lambda Legal

(San Francisco, February 22, 2012) – U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White today ruled the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional, declaring that the discriminatory federal statute violated the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equality. Lambda Legal and Morrison & Foerster LLP brought the case on behalf of Karen Golinski, a federal court employee denied spousal health coverage for her wife.

“This ruling, the first to come after the Justice Department announced it would no longer defend this discriminatory statute in court, spells doom for DOMA,” said Tara Borelli, staff attorney in Lambda Legal’s Western Regional Office in Los Angeles. “The Court recognized the clear fact that a law that denies one class of individuals the rights and benefits available to all others because of their sexual orientation violates the constitutional guarantee of equality embodied in the Fifth Amendment. The Court agreed with us that sexual orientation discrimination by the government should receive heightened scrutiny under the constitution. It then concluded that DOMA could not meet that standard, and that there was not even a rational justification to deny Karen Golinski the same spousal health care benefits that her heterosexual co-workers receive.”

“The demise of this discriminatory statute is long overdue, and the court’s ruling today makes that clear,” said Rita Lin, associate at Morrison & Foerster.  “DOMA produces circumstances where certain federal employees are compensated differently than their coworkers because of their sexual orientation.  That’s unconstitutional.”

Judge White’s ruling is the latest victory in a battle that began in 2008, when Golinski, a 20-year employee of the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, sought to enroll her wife, Amy Cunninghis, in the employee health plan. It is the first DOMA-related ruling since U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Department of Justice had determined DOMA was unconstitutional and would no longer defend it, and the majority leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives hired outside counsel to defend the discriminatory statute. A similar ruling holding DOMA unconstitutional in a separate case is on appeal in the First Circuit.

Golinski’s struggle to enroll her spouse in the family health plan, a benefit routinely granted to her married heterosexual co-workers, travelled a torturous path, including two separate orders by Ninth Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski directing that Golinski be allowed to enroll Cunninghis in the health plan, orders ignored by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), citing DOMA. In April 2011, Lambda Legal and Morrison & Foerster filed an amended complaint directly challenging the constitutionality of DOMA. Judge White heard arguments on this amended complaint on December 16.

"I am profoundly grateful for the thought and consideration that Judge White gave to my case,” Golinski said. “His decision acknowledges that DOMA violates the Constitution and that my marriage to Amy is equal to those marriages of my heterosexual colleagues. This decision is a huge step toward equality."


Press contact: Tom Warnke, Cell: 213-841-4503: Email:twarnke@lambdalegal.org
Lambda Legal is a national organization committed to achieving full recognition of the civil rights of lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, transgender people and those with HIV through impact litigation, education and public policy work.