Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyPosts Tagged As: Golinski v OPM
December 3rd, 2012
The U.S. Supreme Court issued its Orders this morning, with none of the marriage-related cases making the list. This likely means that at least some of those cases will be scheduled for another Conference on Friday morning. It is not unusual for the Court to require several Conferences before deciding whether to take a case. The delay for some of the cases — the Prop 8 appeal could be one candidate — could also mean that the court has denied certiorari for one or more of the cases and is awaiting a dissent from one of the justices.
Update: Hollingsworth v. Perry (the Prop 8 case), Windsor v US, US vs Windsor, BLAG v Gill, HHS v Massachusetts, OPM v Golinskey, Pedersen v OPM, OPM v Pedersen, (the DOMA cases) and Brewer v Diaz (the Arizona domestic partnership benefits case) have all been moved to the December 7 conference according to their respective docket pages. (Note: Some of the DOMA cases have two dockets because representatives from both sides have appealed to the Supreme Court.) Chris Geidner says that if they don’t make up their minds on December 7, the next scheduled Conference is January 4.
Update: Lambda Legal’s Jon W. Davidson explains the complexity facing the Supreme Court, with each case bringing with it its own unique set of arguments and prcedural questions:
Justice Kagan needs to decide whether to recuse herself from GLAD’s Gill v. OPM case. The ACLU’s Windsor v. United States case involves the additional wrinkle of how New York treats marriages entered in Canada. Lambda Legal’s Golinski v. OPM case, GLAD’s Pedersen v. OPM case, and Windsor, all came to the Supreme Court in an unusual way—with requests for review having been filed before decisions from the intermediate appellate courts were issued. And there have been questions raised about the right of various parties to ask for Supreme Court review because of who the party asking is or because that party won below.
The Supreme Court has to decide not only which challenge to DOMA to hear, but also whether to hear the Perry or Diaz cases now, or wait until after a DOMA case is decided. Although the questions in these two cases are different from the DOMA challenges, a decision in a DOMA case that laws that discriminate based on sexual orientation should be given heightened scrutiny by the courts and presumed unconstitutional could make the Perry and Diaz cases easier to decide, and the Court might choose to hold one or both of those cases for that reason. If Perry is to be considered now, the justices may direct the parties to brief only the narrow ground decided by the Ninth Circuit that involves the unusual circumstances of California’s marriage ban or broader grounds as well, in addition to the question of whether or not the proponents of Prop 8 have the right to appeal. In Diaz, the Court needs to consider whether to get involved at this point (wading in on whether a preliminary injunction was properly issued keeping insurance coverage in place while the case proceeds), when the case is not yet fully resolved at the trial court.
November 30th, 2012
That’s according to SCOTUSblog’s publisher Tom Goldstein:
At their Conference today, the Justices will consider petitions raising federal constitutional issues related to same-sex marriage. These are the most significant cases these nine Justices have ever considered, and probably that they will ever decide.
I have never before seen cases that I believed would be discussed two hundred years from now. Bush v. Gore and Obamacare were relative pipsqueaks. The government’s assertion of the power to prohibit a loving couple to marry, or to refuse to recognize such a marriage, is profound. So is the opposite claim that five Justices can read the federal Constitution to strip the people of the power to enact the laws governing such a foundational social institution.
While the cases are historic, the justices are being called upon to judge them today:
Our country and societies around the world will read the Justices’ decision(s) not principally as a legal document but instead as a statement by a wise body about whether same-sex marriages are morally right or wrong. The issues are that profound and fraught; they in a sense seem to transcend “law.” Given the inevitability of same-sex marriage, if the Court rules against those claiming a right to have such unions recognized, it will later be judged to be “on the wrong side of history.”
But the verdict of history cannot decide the legal questions presented by these cases. The cases arrive today, in this moment, before our cultural transition has completed. In a sense, it is a shame that there is such pressure to hear the cases now; the judgment for the rest of the nation’s history would certainly favor these claims. But if they do decide to grant review, the Justices cannot merely choose to embrace the past or the future. They will have to make a judgment now.
You’ve got to read the whole thing. He’s right: this is history before our eyes, whether it winds up being Dred Scott or Loving v. Virginia.
February 24th, 2012
As expected, Congressional Republican leaders have appealed Wednesday’s ruling striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), under the direction of House Speaker John Boehner, stepped in to defend DOMA when the Obama administration’s Justice Department found that DOMA was unconstitutional. Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White, a George W. Bush appointee, agreed, saying that there is no rational basis for the provision which bars the federal government from granting employment benefits to legally married spouses of gay employees.
Chris Geidner at Metro Weekly notices that the appeal filing includes this statement: “The Democratic Leader and the Democratic Whip decline to support the filing of this notice of appeal.”
February 22nd, 2012
Chris Geidner at Metro Weekly has the breaking news that Federal District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White found that Section three of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. Karen Golinski is suing the Office of Personnel Management for denying her request for equal health insurance benefits for her wife:
In part, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey S. White today found that Section 3 of DOMA violates the equal protection rights of Golinski, finding that heightened scrutiny applies — as urged by the DOJ — and noting that it might not even pass rational basis — the lowest — legal scrutiny:
The Court concludes that, based on the justifications proffered by Congress for its passage of DOMA, the statute fails to satisfy heightened scrutiny and is unconstitutional as applied to Ms. Golinski.
Although the Court finds that DOMA is subject to and fails to satisfy heightened scrutiny, it notes that numerous courts have found that the statute fails even rational basis review.
This finding exceeds the Justice Department’s determination that DOMA, section 3, which prohibits the federal government from recognizing fully-legal same-sex marriages, requires heightened scrutiny and is unconstitutional at that level. Because of the Justice Department’s finding, the Obama administration has stopped defending Section 3 in court. The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), led by the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives, is defending DOMA in the case.
Judge White, a Bush administration appointee, cited a 2001 US Supreme Court discrimination case in finding that DOMA unconstitutionally discriminates against same-sex couples.
Even though animus is clearly present in its legislative history, the Court, having examined that history, the arguments made in its support, and the effects of the law, is persuaded that something short of animus may have motivated DOMA’s passage:
Prejudice, we are beginning to understand, rises not from malice or hostile animus alone. It may result as well from insensitivity caused by simple want of careful, rational reflection or from some instinctive mechanism to guard against people who appear to be different in some respects from ourselves.
BLAG has the option of appealing the decision to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Two other similar cases in Massachusetts resulted in DOMA’s Section 3 being declared unconstitutional there. Those cases are now on appeal with the First Circuit Court of Appeals.
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