DOMA & US Supreme Court Update

By Charlotte Robinson, November 14, 2012
One week after Obama's reelection the United States Supreme Court has rescheduled the date when it will consider whether to grant review in Hollingsworth v. Perry (formerly Perry v. Brown), the federal constitutional challenge to California’s Proposition 8. The Perry case, along with several cases challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), have been distributed for consideration at the Justices’ private Conference scheduled for Friday, November 30th. The Proposition 8 & DOMA cases had previously been distributed for the Conference of Tuesday, November 20. Enacted in November 2008, Proposition 8 eliminated the fundamental freedom of gay & lesbian Californians to marry. DOMA, which was enacted by Congress in 1996, nullifies the marriages of gay & lesbian couples for all purposes of federal law. If the Court grants review, the Justices will go on to consider whether Proposition 8 violates the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. If the Court denies review, the February 2012 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that struck down Proposition 8 is made permanent, ending four years of marriage inequality in California. The Supreme Court is expected to release an Order List with its decisions on cases it has granted or denied review from its November 30 Conference by Monday, December 3. In the event that the Court neither grants nor denies review in Perry by December 3, the Justices will discuss the case again at a future Conference. So DOMA & Prop 8 Drags On.
Updates to Come...:)
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1 comment:

  1. There has been a lot of banter about what will happen, mostly what happens if the Court denies review.But if the court should decide to go ahead and review it, one of the possible outcomes is that the decision will be made that DOMA is unconstitutional. I don’t know how it ever could have passed anyhow. DOMA restricts equal protection of the law based on gender, and since gender is now and has been a protected class along with race, religion, ethnicity, etc, I can’t see how the Justices would decide to deny review. Something similar happened in the late 60s when persons of different races wanted to marry. It was legal in some places, not in others. The US Supreme Court ruled that such restrictions based on race were unconstitutional. I am hopeful that the same will occur for this gender issue as well.

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