By Alex Stein
Yes, those damages are now available. The Connecticut Supreme Court decision that affirmed their availability, Mueller v. Tepler, — A.3d —- (Conn. 2014), was widely anticipated. Read More
Tag: Same Sex Marriage
The DOMA Petition You Should Be Following
You may be thinking “DOMA? Hello, this is HEALTH LAW.” Please stick with me for a moment. The Supreme Court appears to be collecting petitions for certiorari regarding the Defense of Marriage Act, likely to determine which circuit’s decision is the best vehicle for considering the constitutionality of this federal law. One such petition results from the First Circuit’s decision in Massachusetts v. Department of Health and Human Services/Hara v. Office of Personnel Management, which held that section 3 of DOMA violated the Fifth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The court reasoned that promoting marriage is not rationally related to denying federal benefits to same-sex couples, thereby avoiding the creation of a new category of suspect class. The twist is that the state of Massachusetts also claims that section 3 of DOMA, which denies federal economic benefits to same-sex couples, exceeds Congress’s Spending Clause authority and infringes the state’s 10th Amendment rights. While the First Circuit did not agree with the state on these points, it did incorporate federalism concerns into its Equal Protection Clause analysis by noting that states traditionally have defined marriage, therefore the federal government cannot protect the state of Massachusetts from its own definition of marriage by promoting heterosexual marriage. Read More