As Dale and I have blogged about (see here, here, here, and here), the New Jersey courts are hearing a claim that the state’s civil union regime is no longer constitutionally adequate and that the state and federal constitutions now require same-sex marriage. That litigation was recently fast-tracked to the New Jersey Supreme Court. Today […]
Archive | Same-Sex Marriage
Two New Essays on Post-Windsor Choice-of-Law Questions
The Northwestern Law Review Colloquy is running an interesting-so-far series on United States v. Windsor. The first two parts of the series are up, and both discuss post-DOMA choice of law issues. First is DOMA’s Ghost, an essay by Brad Greenberg on copyright reversionary interests. The Copyright Act is one of the few federal statutes […]
Gay Marriage in Oregon (Sort of)
The state’s Department of Justice has concluded that the state’s administrative agencies can (and probably must) recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in other states, even for purposes of providing state-law benefits. The opinion, dated October 16, was revealed in a memo from the head of the state’s agencies directing those agencies to treat same-sex couples […]
Duquesne Federalist Society
By Dale Carpenter on October 14, 2013 10:22 am in Beyond DOMA, DOMA, Equal Protection, Federalism, Same-Sex Marriage
Tomorrow I’ll be discussing the Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor with Professor Lynn Wardle of BYU Law School. We’ll be there at the invitation of the Duquesne University Law School student chapter of the Federalist Society. The event begins at Noon.
New Jersey Supreme Court Agrees to Expedited Consideration of SSM Case
The New Jersey Supreme Court has agreed to hear Garden State Equality v. Dow, a challenge to the state’s limitation of marriage to opposite-sex couples. The trial court recently held the law unconstitutional on the grounds that after United States v. Windsor federal benefits remain unavailable to same-sex couples in civil unions, denying them full […]
Two Upcoming Speaking Engagements
By Ilya Somin on September 30, 2013 1:20 pm in Democracy and Political Ignorance, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Same-Sex Marriage
Over the next two weeks, I will be doing two out-of-town speaking engagements that may be of interest to some of our readers. On Thursday, October, 3, 12:00-1:15 PM, I will be doing a talk on my new book Democracy and Political Ignorance: Why Smaller Government is Smarter, at Columbia Law School in Jerome Greene […]
State Denies In-State Tuition to Same-Sex Spouse of a Servicemember
The effects of federal recognition of same-sex marriages across the full spectrum of federal benefits, including for those domiciled in states that ban the recognition of their marriages for state purposes, are bubbling up on an almost daily basis. According to the Dallas Voice, the University of Texas-San Antonio (UTSA) has denied an in-state tuition […]
DOMA and Dignity
By Dale Carpenter on September 26, 2013 9:43 pm in Beyond DOMA, Federalism, Fifth Amendment, Gay Marriage, Same-Sex Marriage, Sexual Orientation
Why is the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional? Here are two propositions that United States v. Windsor might be thought to stand for: (1) The federal government’s decision not to recognize state-sanctioned marriages of same-sex couples was an unconstitutional intrusion on federalism (a structural claim); or (2) The federal government’s decision not to recognize state-sanctioned marriages of same-sex […]
Neomi Rao, Guest-Blogging about Windsor, Dignity, Recognition, and Individual Rights
Prof. Neomi Rao (George Mason) has a very interesting essay on Windsor — one of the same-sex marriage cases — called The Trouble with Dignity and Rights of Recognition [UPDATE: link fixed], and I’m delighted to say that she’ll be guest-blogging about it for the next few days. Here’s a summary of the paper: In […]
Murder Prosecution Raises Multiple Same-Sex Marriage Recognition Questions
A current murder prosecution in Kentucky happens to simultaneously raise two different same-sex-marriage recognition problems that I’ve previously blogged about. In Kentucky, as in many states, spouses don’t have to testify against one another about things they said while married. Ms. Bobby Jo Clary is on trial for murder, and the state wants her partner, […]
Bill Introduced by House Republicans Offers Broad Exemptions to Opponents of Same-Sex Marriage (and Non-Marital Sex)
By Dale Carpenter on September 19, 2013 12:51 pm in Religion and the Law, Religious Freedom, Same-Sex Marriage
Sixty members of the U.S. House of Representatives (58 Republicans and 2 Democrats) have introduced legislation, the “Marriage and Religious Freedom Act” (MARFA), that would prohibit any “adverse action” by the federal government against any “person” who acts on the basis of a religious belief opposing same-sex marriage or opposing sexual relations outside of opposite-sex marriages. “Adverse actions” […]
Labor Department Extends ERISA Protections to Same-Sex Spouses
By Dale Carpenter on September 18, 2013 11:04 pm in Beyond DOMA, ERISA, Gay Marriage, Gay Rights, Same-Sex Marriage
The effect of United States v. Windsor continues to ripple through federal law, expanding by leaps and bounds the rights and protections afforded to same-sex spouses. The effect has been magnified by a friendly federal bureaucracy under the Obama administration, which is widely adopting a place-of-celebration rule for recognizing same-sex marriages under federal laws using […]
New Labor Guidance on Same-Sex Marriage and ERISA
Thanks to the indispensable Chris Geidner, I see that the Department of Labor has issued “guidance” about how to deal with same-sex marriages under ERISA. Like just about every federal agency other than the Social Security Administration, the labor department takes the view that a marriage is valid for federal purposes if it was valid […]
Does Windsor Require States to Recognize Out-of-State Same-Sex Marriages?
I’ve blogged before about Obergefell v. Kasich, the first post-Windsor decision to raise the very interesting question of whether states are required to recognize out-of-state same-sex marriages. I’ve now written a short essay on that question, which is forthcoming in the NYU Journal of Law and Liberty’s inaugural Supreme Court Review-Preview. Here is the introduction: […]
IRS Will Recongize Same-Sex Marriages Regardless of Where Couples Reside
Today the Treasury department announced that it will recognize all same-sex marriages valid in the “place of celebration” regardless of where the couple now lives. This is particularly noteworthy because it seems like a policy change. It had generally been thought that the IRS deals with other questions of marital validity by looking to residence. […]