This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen
on .
It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
Supreme Court Could Make History on Same-Sex Marriage, or Not
Court Strikes Down U.S. Marriage Act
(about 2 hours later)
WASHINGTON — It is usually impossible to say when the Supreme Court will announce any particular decision. There is one exception: On the last day of the term, when the court takes action on every remaining case, the process of elimination supplies the answer.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court issued a pair of rulings Wednesday expanding gay rights, ruling unconstitutional a 1996 law denying federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples and clearing the way for California to legalize same-sex marriage.
The last day of the term is Wednesday. The court has yet to issue decisions in two momentous cases on same-sex marriage.
In the California case, the court ruled that opponents of same-sex marriage did not have standing to appeal a a lower-court ruling that overturned California’s ban. The Supreme Court’s ruling appears to remove legal obstacles to same-sex couples marrying in the state, but the court did not issue a broad ruling likely to affect other states.
Those facts in combination mean that shortly after 10 a.m. the justices will announce their rulings on challenges to two laws that define marriage to include only unions of a man and a woman.
The decision on the federal law was 5 to 4, with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy writing the majority opinion, which the four liberal-leaning justices joined.
One case, from New York, concerns the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which denies federal benefits to gay and lesbian couples married in states that allow such unions.
“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,” Justice Kennedy wrote. “By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others.”
The other, from California, challenges Proposition 8, the state’s ban on same-sex marriage.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts was in the minority, as were Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
The rulings will come against the backdrop of a rapid shift in public attitudes about same-sex marriage, with recent polls indicating that a majority of Americans support allowing such unions. When the justices heard arguments in the two cases in March, nine states and the District of Columbia had laws allowing same-sex marriage. Since then, three more states have enacted such laws.
The ruling overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, which passed with bipartisan support and President Bill Clinton signed.
The New York case, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307, challenges the part of the 1996 law that defines marriage as between only a man and a woman for the purposes of more than 1,000 federal laws and programs. (Another part of the law, not before the court, says that states need not recognize same-sex marriages from other states.)
The decision will immediately extend some federal benefits to same-sex couples, but it will also raise a series of major decisions for the Obama administration about how aggressively to overhaul references to marriage throughout the many volumes that lay out the laws of the United States.
The case concerns two New York City women, Edith Windsor and Thea Clara Spyer, who married in 2007 in Canada. Ms. Spyer died in 2009, and Ms. Windsor inherited her property. The 1996 law did not allow the Internal Revenue Service to treat Ms. Windsor as a surviving spouse, and she faced a tax bill of about $360,000 that would not have applied to a spouse in an opposite-sex marriage.
“In the majority’s telling, this story is black-and-white: Hate your neighbor or come along with us,” Justice Scalia wrote in his dissent. “The truth is more complicated.”
Ms. Windsor sued, and last year the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, struck down the 1996 law.
Justice Scalia read from his dissent on the bench, a step justices take in a small share of cases, typically to show that they have especially strong views.
Should the justices strike down the law, married same-sex couples would start to receive federal benefits. Should they uphold the law, the current state of affairs for married same-sex couples – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called it “skim milk marriage” when the case was argued in March – would continue.
Justice Kennedy, in his opinion, wrote that the law was “unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”
No ruling in the case on the 1996 law would require states without same-sex marriage to adopt it.
The court is still expected to rule Wednesday on a second case involving same-sex marriage: whether California’s ban on it is unconstitutional. The decision on the Defense of Marriage Act does not alter any state laws governing whether same-sex couples can marry. It instead determines whether same-sex couples that are legally married in one state receive federal benefits that apply to heterosexual married couples.
The case is procedurally tangled. The Obama administration argued that the law is unconstitutional, though it continues to enforce it. House Republicans intervened to defend the law, though it is not clear that they were entitled to represent the interests of the United States.
That leaves the possibility that no party before the Supreme Court had standing to challenge the appeals court’s decision.
The California case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144, was filed in 2009 by Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, two lawyers who were on opposite sides in the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, which settled the 2000 presidential election. The suit, brought on behalf of two same-sex couples, argued that California voters had violated the federal Constitution the previous year when they overrode a decision of the state’s Supreme Court allowing same-sex marriage.
Lower federal courts agreed with Mr. Olson and Mr. Boies, striking down Proposition 8.
The justices have several options in the California case. They could reverse the appeals court, leaving California’s ban on same-sex marriage in place. They could affirm the appeals court’s ruling on a theory that would allow same-sex marriage only in California. Or they could address the broader question of whether the Constitution requires states to allow such marriages.
It is also possible that the court will give no answer on the merits, deciding instead that it was powerless to hear the case because no party before it was entitled to appeal from the decisions of the lower courts. (The California officials who lost in the lower courts declined to appeal. Supporters of the ballot initiative did appeal, but it is not clear that they were entitled to step into the government’s shoes to do so.)
That last option – dismissal on standing grounds, or something similar — would lead to short-term confusion, but many legal experts say they expect it would result in same-sex marriage returning to California in a matter of weeks.
