Politics & Government

Supreme Court Strikes Down DOMA, Dismisses Prop 8

Six weeks after Minnesota became the 12th state to legalize same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled twice in favor of same-sex marriage advocates Wednesday morning, stating the Defense of Marriage Act was in direct violation of the United States Constitution and ruling that California’s Proposition 8 case had been decided by lower courts, dismissing the appeal.

The historic decision on the federal DOMA paves way for couples to share in hundreds of benefits bestowed by federal tax codes to couples married in states that recognize same-sex marriage.

Meanwhile, the dismissal serves as a victory for so-called gay marriage advocates out west as it clears the way for same-sex couples to continue to marry in California, coming five years after that state passed an amendment to the state constitution not recognizing those unions

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Minnesota joins that list in a little more than month, Aug. 1., when the state government will recognize same-sex unions. Legislation passed the Minnesota House and Senate and was signed into law on May 12.  

“So proud,” Tweeted Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota’s Fifth District, “the Supreme Court put America one step further on the path to marriage equality by overturning DOMA.”

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Ellison in the past has likened the march for gay marriage rights to the 1960s civil rights movement.

Meanwhile, conservative Sixth District Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann said God, not the Supreme Court, defines marriage.

“No man, not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted,” Bachmann wrote in a statement to the press. “What the Court has done will undermine the best interest of children and the best interests of the United States.

Her sentiments were echoed by Sen. Dan Hall of Burnsville six weeks ago in the State Capitol, when he said ruling in favor of gay marriage "would harm children and cause a rift in Minnesota's social fabric greater than anything since the Civil War." 

Added Hall: 

"They’ll call me a bigot, they’ll call me a hater, they’ll spit in my face, like they did a friend of mine. [But] there are things in life, members, that are worth standing up for, even to be persecuted for."

President Barack Obama, who aligned with the State Judicial Department to defend DOMA when he first took office, reversed course in 2011, asking the DOMA to stop taking on cases challenging the act.

Today, the president said, he was in favor of the SCOTUS decision.

"When all Americans are treated as equal—no matter who they are or whom they love—we are all more free,” Obama stated via social media.

The Twin Cities GLBT population will celebrate the decisions –both that of the Supreme Court and this year’s legislation in Minnesota – this weekend in Minneapolis with Gay Pride weekend. A complete schedule can be found here.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the decision for the majority, writing that “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.”  

He was joined in the majority by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The Proposition 8 decision was written by Chief Justice John Roberts.

“We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “We decline to do so for the first time here.




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