I wish I could have said this day was coming and this soon but to be honest I did not. Until today there were strong reasons to believe the Supreme Court would punt on this case, deciding that it did not have the authority to answer the questions asked of it, especially when you consider the tenor of the oral arguments back in March. However, the Court decided to uphold the lower court decisions and struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as unconstitutional. I am neither overjoyed or saddened by this decision and I hope my thoughts outlined below are both coherent and make sense.
The facts of the case are rather straightforward. Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer were in a long-term relationship from 1963-2009. In 2007 they decided to get married in Canada and the state of New York recognized their marriage. In 2009 Thea Spyer passed away, leaving her entire estate to Edith Windsor. Hetero-sexual couples are allowed to claim spousal exemptions to federal estate taxes but because of section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act which amends the Federal dictionary to define marriage between one man and one woman and spouse to be the partner of a person of the opposite sex Ms. Windsor was not allowed to do so. As a result she sued.
Standing issues aside the majority’s opinion, written by Justice Anthony Kennedy and joined by Justices Ginsburg, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Kagan turns on the concept of federalism. Beloved by conservatives I have no doubt they are now twisting themselves into intellectual knots to deny federalism in this case. Kennedy rightly concludes that the states have long had the power to define domestic relations and that the sole goal of DOMA, to treat one class of citizen as different just because of who they are, is not a valid reason to overrule the states.
I encourage you to read the full opinion but below is the concluding section of the majority opinion (case citations omitted):
The power the Constitution grants it also restrains. And though Congress has great authority to design laws to fit its own conception of sound national policy, it cannot deny the liberty protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment.
What has been explained to this point should more than suffice to establish that the principal purpose and the necessary effect of this law are to demean those persons who are in a lawful same-sex marriage. This requires the Court to hold, as it now does, that DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution.
The liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause contains within it the prohibition against denying to any person the equal protection of the laws. While the Fifth Amendment itself withdraws from Government the power to degrade or demean in the way this law does, the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amend- ment makes that Fifth Amendment right all the more specific and all the better understood and preserved.
The class to which DOMA directs its restrictions and restraints are those persons who are joined in same-sex marriages made lawful by the State. DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper. DOMA in- structs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment. This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages.
The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit is affirmed.
It is so ordered.
As a classical liberal I am glad this decision was decided the way it was. The Court could have used the 14th amendment to instantly apply same-sex marriage to all states regardless of their wishes. Roe v Wade was decided in this manner and we are still fighting that battle today. Today’s decision strikes down an unconstitutional law and it allows the states to continue to define marriage as they always have. If the court had punted on this case then we would have continued to see people like Edith Windsor, and there are many like her, experience injustice. While not comprehensive a list of all the various forms of discrimination same-sex couples faced as a result of DOMA can be found in section 4 of the majority opinion (pages 20-24).
So where do we go from here?
I hope social conservatives do not retrench and fight bitterly for every inch of ground in each state as the question of same-sex marriage moves across the country. This will only invite an equally bitter response from same-sex marriage advocates and in the end no one will be better off. While I would prefer to have no benefits conferred on someone because of their marital status in some ways I think this decision moves us in that direction. It also opens the door for social conservatives to use non-legal means to proactively live out marriage as it is defined in the bible instead of just condemning everyone who does not do so.
As if the opinion itself were not enough I give you more good reading…
And last but certainly not least 1 Corinthians 5:12, “What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside?” Where Paul calls us to judge not those who do not claim to hold to the precepts of Christianity.
