Massachusetts Challenges DOMA
March 3rd, 2009Today, a federal case was filed in federal court in the District of Massachusetts by Mary Bonauto, a civil rights attorney who’s famous for arguing (and winning) the same-sex marriage case in front of the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 2004 and fellow Northeastern Alumni, to overturn the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
DOMA, as I’ve posted about before, is a federal law enacted during the Clinton Administration that says that states do not have to recognize other’s state’s same-sex marriage. It also defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman for federal benefit purposes. This is very unusual that a federal law would define marriage because marriage has always been defined by the States.
The couples today who are filing this action hopes to eventually be heard at the US Supreme Court and get a ruling that says that DOMA is unconstitutional because it is inherently discriminatory. And I agree that it is discriminatory. I believe that if Obama doesn’t enact legislation to overrule DOMA and this actually gets heard by the Supreme Court, it will go down in history and jurisprudence as a case as important as Loving v. Virgina (the law students and lawyers who read this blog will know this case quite well).
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