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Bad idea.
Inability to get back to sleep?
Even worse.
New userpic?
Kinda nifty.
Inability to get back to sleep?
Even worse.
New userpic?
Kinda nifty.
Jul. 8th, 2010
From Salon (may require an ad, please go look anyways):
U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro has ruled that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. Section 3 defined marriage, for the purposes of federal law, as exclusively meaning a union between one man and one woman....
Tauro, ruling in favor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Boston couples and widowers who also challenged the law, said that DOMA violates equal protection principles.
I am looking forward to DOMA going away.
(Added)
I have just read through the ruling posted by the judge. I've been doing a fair bit of judgment-reading for one of my classes; practice can help. Judge Tauro mentioned he lacks the standing regarding one of the plaintiffs because his court lacks proper jurisdiction, although he concedes that the ruling he makes may affect the plaintiff's standing with the other court.
The ruling is interesting. The judge mentions the plaintiffs ask for DOMA to be evaluated strictly based on its anomalous departure from the historical norm of the Federal government respecting marriages licensed by one of the several states; it burdens a family's integrity of relationships; and that they ask for homosexuals to be considered a suspect class, a class ruling that has not been previously applied to homosexuals.
The judge then said the law didn't even pass basic constitutional muster and thus he did not need to even consider the basic arguments of the plaintiffs, as the law did not even meet its own criteria for why it should exist, even accounting for due deference of intent to the Legislative branch.
On the very interesting side, he first checked the law against various Constitutional tests, which DOMA flunked. He went on to examine Congress' intent in passing the law. These included:
encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing;
conserving scarce resources, in this case referring to Federal dollars paid out in benefits to same-sex spouses; and
to express moral disapproval of homosexuality and moral approval of heterosexuality - do remember, at that point the Congress was Republican in both houses.
He mentioned that Congress and the states had never before put procreation or child-rearing as distinct preconditions for marriage. He also mentioned that Congress specifically declined to examine how same-sex marriage benefits would impact the budget or impact society, thus not giving any evidence that it did - and in any event, this was fairly petty. Finally, he mentioned that moral disapproval was not a good reason to deny rights to people.
I found his discussion of the history of marriage in the US to be interesting, because he mentioned that this was the first time that Congress had ever written a law to specifically deal with marriage. Previously, all anybody needed to get Federal marriage benefits was to prove they were married under the laws of one state. He then mentioned how the laws vary state to state but Federal law and regulations always previously just accepted the definitions given by the states.
On the even more interesting side, while the Judge did not require examining the plaintiffs' arguments because the law failed Constitutional muster, he nevertheless did examine the law in light of the first two arguments. I am not surprised he didn't touch suspect class; that is a huge can of worms with major implications regarding rights and discrimination far beyond just Part 3 of DOMA.
The ruling is well-written from what I can see. I do wonder how Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts will try to get around the arguments there.
U.S. District Judge Joseph Tauro has ruled that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act is unconstitutional. Section 3 defined marriage, for the purposes of federal law, as exclusively meaning a union between one man and one woman....
Tauro, ruling in favor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Boston couples and widowers who also challenged the law, said that DOMA violates equal protection principles.
I am looking forward to DOMA going away.
(Added)
I have just read through the ruling posted by the judge. I've been doing a fair bit of judgment-reading for one of my classes; practice can help. Judge Tauro mentioned he lacks the standing regarding one of the plaintiffs because his court lacks proper jurisdiction, although he concedes that the ruling he makes may affect the plaintiff's standing with the other court.
The ruling is interesting. The judge mentions the plaintiffs ask for DOMA to be evaluated strictly based on its anomalous departure from the historical norm of the Federal government respecting marriages licensed by one of the several states; it burdens a family's integrity of relationships; and that they ask for homosexuals to be considered a suspect class, a class ruling that has not been previously applied to homosexuals.
The judge then said the law didn't even pass basic constitutional muster and thus he did not need to even consider the basic arguments of the plaintiffs, as the law did not even meet its own criteria for why it should exist, even accounting for due deference of intent to the Legislative branch.
On the very interesting side, he first checked the law against various Constitutional tests, which DOMA flunked. He went on to examine Congress' intent in passing the law. These included:
encouraging responsible procreation and child-rearing;
conserving scarce resources, in this case referring to Federal dollars paid out in benefits to same-sex spouses; and
to express moral disapproval of homosexuality and moral approval of heterosexuality - do remember, at that point the Congress was Republican in both houses.
He mentioned that Congress and the states had never before put procreation or child-rearing as distinct preconditions for marriage. He also mentioned that Congress specifically declined to examine how same-sex marriage benefits would impact the budget or impact society, thus not giving any evidence that it did - and in any event, this was fairly petty. Finally, he mentioned that moral disapproval was not a good reason to deny rights to people.
I found his discussion of the history of marriage in the US to be interesting, because he mentioned that this was the first time that Congress had ever written a law to specifically deal with marriage. Previously, all anybody needed to get Federal marriage benefits was to prove they were married under the laws of one state. He then mentioned how the laws vary state to state but Federal law and regulations always previously just accepted the definitions given by the states.
On the even more interesting side, while the Judge did not require examining the plaintiffs' arguments because the law failed Constitutional muster, he nevertheless did examine the law in light of the first two arguments. I am not surprised he didn't touch suspect class; that is a huge can of worms with major implications regarding rights and discrimination far beyond just Part 3 of DOMA.
The ruling is well-written from what I can see. I do wonder how Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts will try to get around the arguments there.