Washington D.C. In a historic ruling on June 26, the United States Supreme Court struck down part of the Defense of Marriage that prevents same-sex couples who are married in states where it is legal from applying for federal benefits. The vote was 5-4.
“DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment,” the decision reads.
Congress passed DOMA in 1996, and then-President Bill Clinton signed it into law. The Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations all defended DOMA against court challenges. But in 2011, President Obama changed his mind and concluded that DOMA violated the rights of same-sex couples, so House Republicans stepped in to defend the law.
“There is a ‘careful consideration’ standard: In determining whether a law is motivated by improper animus or purpose, discriminations of an unusual character especially require careful consideration. DOMA cannot survive those principles,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the decision. “The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others.”
This case was not about whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage. Instead, it is about whether Congress can treat married same-sex couples differently from married opposite-sex couples in federal laws and programs like Social Security benefits, immigration, and income taxes.
Couples-both gay and straight-were celebrating outside the Supreme Court building in Washington D.C. when the ruling came down.
The lawsuit that came before the court was actually called “United States vs. Windsor, and was brought by Edith Windsor, who had to pay estate taxes when her legal, same-sex spouse passed away.
