m******1
发帖数: 19713 | 1 Justice Dept.: Strike Down DOMA
By Trudy Ring
KAREN GOLINSKI X390 (Jim Wilson/The New York Times) | ADVOCATE.COM
The Department of Justice Friday gave pro–marriage equality activists a
pleasant surprise by arguing strongly against the Defense of Marriage Act in
a brief filed in federal court that acknowledges the history of
discrimination against gays and lesbians.
The brief urged a U.S. appeals court in San Francisco not to dismiss federal
employee Karen Golinski’s (pictured, right) lawsuit against the U.S.
Office of Personnel Management seeking benefits for her wife, Amy Cunninghis
(left), and instead to find DOMA unconstitutional. The brief is in keeping
with the position the Obama administration had taken on DOMA, which bans
federal recognition of same-sex marriage, but it shows the administration
taking a more active role in the case than expected, observers said.
“Unlike in other cases where DOJ has stopped defending DOMA,” lawyers for
the department “made an expansive case in a 31-page filing that DOMA is
unconstitutional,” Metro Weekly reports. Previously, the Justice Department
had simply attached a letter issued in February by Atty. Gen. Eric Holder
saying that the administration would no longer defend the law. Before the
administration took that position, the Justice Department had argued for the
dismissal of Golinski’s case.
With President Obama’s administration no longer defending DOMA, Republicans
in Congress took up defense of the antigay law, hiring a private attorney
to do so. Friday’s Justice Department filing was in response to a June 3
filing by that lawyer, Paul Clement.
In the brief the department makes its case “in terms unparalleled in
previous administration statements,” Metro Weekly notes. The filing
acknowledges that “gays and lesbians have been subject to a history of
discrimination” in which “the federal government has played a significant
and regrettable role.” It says that because of this history, courts should
apply a high level of scrutiny to laws that discriminate against this group.
It also calls sexual orientation an “immutable characteristic.”
LGBT activists hailed the filing. Human Rights Campaign president Joe
Solmonese issued a statement saying, “The administration’s decision to
call DOMA what it is — a law that serves no purpose but to single out a
group of people for second-class status — was a watershed moment in the
fight for LGBT equality. Now the federal government has taken that historic
stand a step further and put real meat on the bones of why there is no basis
for DOMA to stand. This step represents real leadership from the Obama
administration and further hastens the day in which we will leave this
odious law in the dustbin of history.”
Tobias Barrington Wolff, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania
who has advocated for LGBT rights, told the Associated Press that the brief
“represents the concrete manifestation of a complete paradigm shift in the
federal government’s position on antigay discrimination and the
constitutional rights of married same-sex couples.”
Also Friday, Golinski’s lawyers filed a motion for summary judgment in the
case, saying the facts were not in dispute and that the court should decide
it on legal issues alone. |
|
