WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court this morning struck down a nearly two-decades old federal law defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman, opening the doors for married gay couples to be eligible for a litany of federal benefits.
The 5-to-4 ruling on the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act deemed the law unconstitutional under the equal protection clause. The power to regulate marriage falls to the states, not the federal government, wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy, the critical swing vote.
“DOMA’s unusual deviation from the usual tradition of recognizing and accepting state definitions of marriage here operates to deprive same-sex couples of the benefits and responsibilities that come with the federal recognition of their marriages,†Kennedy wrote. He was joined by the four liberal Justices, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan.
The court is expected to rule shortly on a challenge to a California referendum banning same-sex marriage.
The justices in March heard two days of historic deliberations on gay marriage – weighing the constitutionality of a federal law defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman as well as a state referendum banning gay marriage in California.
The Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as between a man and a woman, denies married gay couples the right to more than 1,100 federal benefits available to married heterosexual couples, including family medical leave, spousal Social Security benefits and spousal disability, and the ability to file joint federal tax returns and receive a marital deduction.
The ruling impacts married gay couples in Massachusetts, which became the first state to legalize gay marriage in 2003, as well as couples in nearly a dozen other states that have legalized same-sex marriage.
The US appeals court in Boston had granted equal federal benefits to gay couples in much of New England last May, on the grounds that the Defense of Marriage Act violated the federal equal protection clause.
The case that went before the Supreme Court involved an 83-year-old New York widow, Edith Windsor, who was forced to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes after the death of her female spouse because their marriage is not recognized under federal law. If Windsor had been married to a man, she would not have had to pay the estate tax.
The federal law was signed by President Clinton 17 years ago, when gay marriage was purely hypothetical. Since then, public and political opinion has shifted, with President Obama becoming the first president to announce his support for gay marriage rights last May.
In the California case, voters there banned gay marriage six months after the state Supreme Court endorsed such unions. The state’s constitution was amended to recognized marriages only between a man and a woman.
Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @GlobeTracyJan.
