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Defense of Marriage Act

March 22, 2013
Same-Sex Marriage, Political Backlash and the Case for Going Slow
Guest Post
by Eric J. Segall, Professor of Law, Georgia State University College of Law. Professor Segall is author of Supreme Myths: Why the Supreme Court is not a Court and its Justices are not Judges. This post is part of an ACSblog symposium on Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor.

Progressives and liberals in favor of same sex marriage need to be careful what they wish for when the Court decides the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and Proposition 8 cases later this term. It would be easy to argue that the Court should overturn DOMA and invalidate Proposition 8 on the grounds that governmental classifications based on sexual orientation require heightened scrutiny, and neither California nor the federal government can satisfy that standard. The problem with the Court imposing a national rule, however, may be a serious backlash against the decision resulting in long term pain for everyone on the left. The lessons of Roe v. Wade might be instructive.

In the years preceding Roe, there was a popular momentum flowing through the states to make the right to choose a bit easier but legislative efforts to secure the right were blocked by the efforts of a strong and well-funded Catholic minority. There is a similar momentum now (albeit only recently) on the issue of same-sex marriage. The Court’s decision in Roe, however, not only slowed the momentum but created a significant backlash though not in the traditional way most people think. In ground breaking work, Professors Reva Siegel and Linda Greenhouse have suggested that, when it comes to the right to choose, women truly are better off today than they would have been without Roe, and that the case for backlash after Roe is overstated. They may be right when it comes to the right to choose, but they did not purport to ask another related but equally important question. Although the backlash on abortion specifically may be overstated, the use of the Court’s decision in Roe by right wing groups on issues other than abortion has been a major problem for the left. The rise of the New Right in the 1970’s led by Jerry Falwell and Phyllis Schaffly, the emergence of brash, young, and conservative anti-choice republicans and judges in the 1980’s, and the difficulty of confirming liberal judges in the Senate, can in significant part be traced to the criticism of the Court’s decision in Roe. As Cass Sunstein has argued, the rise of the Moral Majority was certainly assisted by opposition to Roe. Meanwhile, as far as the long-term effectiveness of Roe is concerned, not only does the case currently hang by the thread of Justice Kennedy’s robes, but in many states between the two coasts poor women still have an enormously difficult time securing safe, affordable abortions. This is not to say that the Court erred in Roe, but it is a fair question whether the backlash to the decision across a broad range of important issues was worth the somewhat limited abortion rights gained by the decision.

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Supreme Court, LGBT issues, Reproductive freedom, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Equality and Liberty, ACSblog symposium on Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor, Defense of Marriage Act, Eric J. Segall, Guest Post, marriage equality, Proposition 8, Roe v. Wade
March 20, 2013
The Calif. Supreme Court’s Standing Opinion Versus Republicanism
Guest Post
by Anthony S. Winer, Professor of Law, William Mitchell College of Law, Saint Paul, Minnesota. This post is part of an ACSblog symposium on Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor.

As most readers realize, the Supreme Court asked all parties in both of the upcoming marriage cases to brief and argue issues of standing. The possibility that either or both of the cases could be dismissed on the basis of a lack of Article III standing should therefore be taken seriously.

In particular, regarding the Prop 8 case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, I have given some thought to a 2011 opinion of the California Supreme Court that specifically addressed the standing of the Prop 8 proponents. The Prop 8 proponents emphasize this California opinion in defending their standing before the U.S. Supreme Court. However, in this posting I assert that the U.S. Supreme Court should not give any substantial weight to the California Supreme Court’s opinion.

To start with, I’ll say that dismissal for lack of standing in either or both of the cases could have at least a modestly positive result for same-sex marriage rights. A lack of standing in either case would be attributed to the litigants petitioning the Court in opposition to same-sex marriage. Failure of standing would thus go against the opponents of same-sex marriage. Contrarily, any such dismissal is most likely to favor, at least to some extent, the litigants who are advancing same sex-marriage. For those of us supporting same-sex marriage rights, that would most likely be a positive development.

By the same token, however, any such dismissal would also probably result in a relatively narrow ruling with relatively limited effects. That is, in the Prop 8 case, dismissal for the proponents’ lack of standing could result in the reinstatement of the District Court’s determination that Prop 8 is unconstitutional. But such a result would not necessarily affect the constitutionality of similar propositions adopted in other states.

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Supreme Court, Other courts, LGBT issues, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Equality and Liberty, ACSblog symposium on Hollingsworth v. Perry and U.S. v. Windsor, Anthony S. Winer, California Supreme Court, Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, Federalist No. 10, Guest Post, James Madison, Proposition 8, Standing, The Federalist, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
March 8, 2013
DOMA: Irrational, Baseless Law, Merits Brief Argues
by Jeremy Leaming

It took him long enough to disown one of his more atrocious antigay actions he took as president, but Bill Clinton has finally called for the demise of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act.

In a column for The Washington Post, Clinton writes, “On March 27, DOMA will come before the Supreme Court, and the justices will decide whether it is consistent with the principles of a nation that honors freedom, equality and justice above all, and is therefore constitutional. As the president who signed the act into law, I have come to believe that DOMA is contrary to those principles and, in fact incompatible with the Constitution.”

There are two cases the U.S. Supreme Court will hear at the end of this month that raise constitutional issues surrounding marriage equality. In Hollingsworth v. Perry, the justices will consider whether California’s Proposition 8 subverted the equality rights of gay and lesbian couples, and in U.S. v. Windsor, the justices will weigh the constitutionality of a DOMA that bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages, denying scores of federal benefits to couples who have been wed in states that recognize same-sex marriages.

The Obama administration has lodged briefs in both cases with broad calls for equality. Scores of other organizations have lodged friend-of-the-courts briefs arguing for and against marriage equality. (SCOTUSblog provides access to all those briefs here and here.)

The merits brief on behalf of Edith Windsor, the woman challenging the constitutionality of the DOMA provision, advances a resounding call for an end to federal discriminatory treatment of lesbian and gay couples.

Under DOMA the brief notes that the “federal government regards gay couples as not married even if they are married under state law.” [Nine states and the District of Columbia recognize allow same-sex couples to wed.]

“DOMA excludes married couples who are gay,” the merits brief continues, “from all the rights, privileges, and obligations that the federal government otherwise affords married couples. Ms. Windsor’s situation is representative. In addition to be being denied the ability to claim the estate tax deduction on behalf of her deceased spouse’s estate, she has also been denied the Social Security death benefit to which surviving spouses are normally entitled.”

Beyond going through all the federal benefits gay couples are denied because of DOMA it also provides a history of the creation of the discriminatory law. It notes, for instance, that DOMA “sped through Congress in large part because of the strong views many members of Congress expressed at the time about the morality of being gay. During one day’s debate, a Representative declared homosexuality ‘is based on perversion, that it is based on lust.”

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Supreme Court, Other courts, LGBT issues, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Equality and Liberty, Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, Hollingsworth v. Perry, President Clinton, U.S. v. Windsor
February 28, 2013
Obama Administration Says California’s Proposition 8 Violates Equal Protection
by Jeremy Leaming

The Obama administration is weighing in on the constitutional challenge to California’s anti-gay initiative Proposition 8. And like it did in a separate case before the Supreme Court challenging the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, the administration is advancing a call for equality.

The case, Hollingsworth v. Perry is from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which last year invalidated Proposition 8, in part, because it “served no purpose and no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians.”

The Obama administration had no obligation to weigh in, but did so on the last day to lodge briefs with the high court.

“California law provides to same-sex couples registered as domestic partners all the legal incidents of marriage, but it nonetheless denies them the designation of marriage allowed to their opposite-sex counterparts. Particularly in those circumstances, the exclusion of gay and lesbian couples from marriage does not substantially further any important government interest. Proposition 8 thus violates equal protection,” the administration’s brief states.

SCOTUSblog’s Lyle Denniston says the administration’s brief “could be read to support a right to marriage equality in every state, but it did not endorse that idea explicitly.”

Denniston continues, “What the brief endorsed is what has been called the ‘eight-state solution’ – that is, if a state already recognizes for same-sex couples all the privileges and benefits that married couples have (as in the eight states that do so through ‘civil unions’) those states must go the final step and allow those couples to get married. The argument is that it violates the Constitution’s guarantee of legal equality when both same-sex and opposite-sex couples are entitled to the same marital benefits, but only the opposite-sex couples can get married.”

The administration’s brief nonetheless provides what could also be seen as a robust call for equality stretching from coast to coast. For example, the administration argues that laws classifying lesbians and gay men should be subject to “heightened scrutiny.”

“For certain protected classes, however, heightened scrutiny enables courts to ascertain whether the government has employed the classification for a significant and proper purpose, and provides an enhanced measure of protection in circumstances where there is a greater danger that the classification results from impermissible prejudice or stereotypes. Because sexual orientation is a factor that ‘generally provides no sensible ground for different treatment,’ laws that classify based on sexual orientation should be subject to heightened scrutiny,” the brief states.

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Civil rights, Supreme Court, Other courts, LGBT issues, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Equality and Liberty, Adam Liptak, Californai, Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, Hollingsworth v. Perry, Lyle Denniston, Obama administration, Proposition 8, U.S. v. Windsor
December 20, 2012
Tribe Talk
Guest Post
by Dan Urman, Director of Northeastern University’s Doctorate in Law and Policy. Urman is also a member of the ACS Boston Steering Committee.

On Dec. 12, as part of the ACS Boston Lawyer Chapter’s “Legal Legends in the Law” series, Laurence Tribe reflected on his remarkable career as a constitutional law professor and Supreme Court litigator. Tribe, Carl Loeb University Professor at Harvard University, began by providing an overview of the Supreme Court’s decision to hear two cases related to marriage equality: Windsor v. U.S. and Hollingsworth v. Perry. Disagreeing with popular news reports already predicting the outcome, Tribe argued that more than one justice is uncertain about how he or she will vote.

Tribe (pictured) has decades of experience writing, teaching, and litigating constitutional rights for gay and lesbian Americans, often at his professional peril. He referenced his discussion of sexual orientation in his 1978 Treatise, American Constitutional Law, taking a stance well outside of the legal and social “mainstream.” \Tribe argued that laws discriminating against individuals based on sexual orientation were “indistinguishable from laws discriminating against individuals based on their race or gender.” Many friends and colleagues advised him against taking such a position publicly, because it could cost him a position on the U.S. Supreme Court. These warnings resurfaced when he prepared to testify against Judge Robert Bork’s 1987 Supreme Court nomination. Senator Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.) told Professor Tribe that it would be great to see “both of them (Bork and Tribe) on the Court,” and if Tribe testified against Bork, he would be “burning a bridge.” Twenty-five years later, Tribe said that if serving on the Court meant holding back his actual views, it was a bridge he did not want to cross.

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Supreme Court, Other courts, LGBT issues, Constitutional Interpretation and Change, Equality and Liberty, Bowers v. Hardwick, Dan Urman, Defense of Marriage Act, DOMA, Guest Post, Hollingsworth v. Perry, Laurence Tribe, marriage equality, Proposition 8, Romer v. Evans, Windsor v. U.S.