Gay marriage issue reaches [Supreme] Court
Placing before the Supreme Court another huge cultural controversy, the House of Representatives’ Republican leaders on Friday afternoon asked the Justices to uphold the constitutionality of the 1996 federal law that limits all federal programs and benefits for marriage to legal unions of a man and a woman. This could set the stage for the Justices to take up the issue of same-sex marriage in their next Term, opening October 1. The new petition is here; the case does not yet have a docket number assigned.
“This case calls out for the Court’s review,” the petition argued. The First Circuit Court, it added, applied “an entirely novel form of scrutiny that cannot be reconciled with the approach of this Court and that of ten other circuits. Thus, the decision below invalidates an act of Congress, conflicts with the decisions of this Court and numerous other courts of appeals, and embraces an entirely novel approach to constitutional equal protection analysis. It is hard to imagine a stronger candidate for this Court’s review.”
This is the first same-sex marriage case to reach the Court in a new round of lawsuits from coast to coast, with many of the cases focused on the law at issue in the new House GOP petition: the Defense of Marriage Act, passed with overwhelming majorities in the House and Senate and signed into law by President Clinton in 1996. Soon to be filed at the Court is a case from California, testing the constitutionality of “Proposition 8,” the voter-approved ban on marriage for gays and lesbians in that state.
“Proposition 8? has been struck down by a federal appeals court, as has DOMA in the case newly filed at the Supreme Court. The California measure is a flat ban on same-sex marriage, but it is restricted to one state. DOMA applies nationwide, and its section at issue in the new appeal does not seek to ban such marriages, but, when they are allowed under a state’s own laws, denies all federal benefits to such couples.
Read the rest at: http://www.scotusblog.com/2012/06/gay-marriage-issue-reaches-court/#more-148247
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