Supreme Court

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.”

by Jeremy Leaming

California State Assembly Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) and 22 legal scholars are urging the U.S. Supreme Court to invalidate the discriminatory Proposition 8, saying it not only yanks constitutional rights from lesbians and gay men, but also prevents state lawmakers like Pérez from pushing for marriage equality legislation.

In the friend-of-the-court brief lodged in Hollingsworth v. Perry, the speaker and law professors argue that until Proposition 8 came along the state recognized that gay couples should not be treated differently than opposite-sex couples.

“Many gay couples in California are raising children. Many gay teenagers in California need a vision of the future in which they are full participants in the life of their families and communities. And many gay men and lesbians have a fundamental longing to know that as they pass through their days, their lives will not go unnoticed. The State recognizes these basic human feelings for heterosexuals, and before the passage of Proposition 8, the California Constitution protected gay people as well, recognizing their fundamental right to marry,” the brief states.

But after enactment of Proposition 8, the brief continues, “voters eliminated more than the equal right to marry. Under principles of California law and current interpretations by the California Supreme Court, Proposition 8 eliminated the ability of those seeking equal marriage rights to avail themselves of any ability to pursue such rights through the political actions of their accountable elected representatives.”

Pérez, in a press statement about the brief, said the constricting nature of the antigay law “deprives a historically disadvantaged group – a group of which I am a member – of access to traditional representation in a representative democracy. And the deprivation violates the Constitution.”

And other California politicians would like to help advance equality. The Pérez brief notes that Edmund Brown and Kamala Harris “ran and won in 2010 on platforms supporting equal marriage rights and voting to oppose the continued effect of Proposition 8, neither of them can take action to end this case as the voters desire them to do.” Brown is the governor and Harris the attorney general.

The Obama administration, though not a party in the case, filed a brief yesterday with the high court also calling for an end to Proposition 8 and for a broad approach to protecting equality. Some commentators say the Obama brief did not call for an end to all state laws that prevent marriage equality. Yet the brief did call for laws classifying the LGBT community to be subjected to heighted scrutiny. This means that if government, federal or state, bars a group of people from getting married, like lesbians and gay men, but allows their straight counterparts to wed, it should be prepared to overcome a heavy burden as to why equal protection should be flaunted. And As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bob Egelko notes that “underlying rational – that laws discriminating against gays and lesbians must be struck down unless they serve some important government purpose – could, if adopted by the court, invalidate bans on same-sex marriage in all 41 states that have them.”

The Pérez brief urges the high court, when addressing the “federal constitutional issues” in Hollingsworth, to “be mindful of the unique aspects of California law and the ways in which Proposition 8 has eliminated not just equal marriage rights formerly guaranteed by the state Constitution, but also the ability of gay men and lesbians in California to achieve marriage equality through the normal political process. If gay people can be denied access to representative government to achieve equal treatment with respect to an important status such as marriage, then in California, any other small, historically disadvantaged minority group can also be denied the right to representation with respect to seeking any other fundamental right.”

Beyond advancing a profoundly compelling argument for equal protection, the brief reveals how Proposition 8 is fundamentally anti-democratic policy.