A Second Appeals Court Calls Marriage Law Unfair to Gays

By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS

Published: October 18, 2012 - New York Times

A federal appeals court in Manhattan ruled on Thursday that the federal statute defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman unlawfully discriminates against same-sex married couples by denying them equal federal benefits.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is the second federal appeals court to reject a central portion of the federal law, the Defense of Marriage Act, following the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston, which handed down its ruling in May.

But this decision on Thursday is the first time that an appeals court has subjected the law to a relatively tough test for constitutionality that, in effect, elevates issues of sexual orientation to the constitutional level of cases involving sexual discrimination.

The Supreme Court may take up the issue as soon as the current term.

Two of the three judges on the Manhattan court ruled in favor of Edith Windsor, an 83-year-old woman whose case challenged the 1996 statute, saying it violated the Constitution’s equal-protection clause because it recognizes the marriages of heterosexual couples but not those of same-sex couples, even though New York State law makes no such distinction.

Mrs. Windsor, who filed the lawsuit in November 2010, married her longtime partner, Thea Spyer, in Canada in 2007. The two had been together for 44 years.

Though the marriage was recognized in New York, when Mrs. Spyer died in 2009, Mrs. Windsor was not able to claim a deduction for a federal estate tax that is available for the surviving partner of a marriage between heterosexuals. Mrs. Windsor, who had been the sole beneficiary of Mrs. Spyer’s estate, was forced to pay $363,053 in estate taxes. When she requested a refund, the Internal Revenue Service rejected her claim, citing federal marriage law.

Judge Dennis Jacobs, who wrote the majority opinion, said the federal law was “not related to an important government interest,” concluding that “homosexuals are not in a position to adequately protect themselves from the discriminatory wishes of the majoritarian public.”

The statute, approved by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, denies recognition of same-sex marriages by the federal government. In the intervening years, however, several states, including New York, have approved same-sex marriage, though others have passed laws banning it.

In February 2011, the Obama administration determined that the provision of the law that prevents the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages was unconstitutional, and President Obama said he had directed the Department of Justice not to defend that aspect of the law in court.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York, who with City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, had filed a joint amicus brief supporting the lawsuit, said in a statement Thursday that the ruling represented “an important step in ensuring the rights of men and women are not dependent upon who they love and who they chose to spend their lives with.”

He added, “We have much more to do, but we are another step further on the road to a more perfect union for all Americans.”

Mrs. Quinn, who married her partner in May, called the marriage law “an indefensible assault on our civil liberties” in a statement.

Same-sex marriage is on the ballot this November in Maryland, Maine, Minnesota and Washington State.

In the Massachusetts appellate decision from earlier this year, Judge Michael Boudin wrote about the court’s concerns over Congress’s “effort to put a thumb on the scales and influence a state’s decision as to how to shape its own marriage laws.”

He concluded that “only the Supreme Court can finally decide this unique case.”