On December 29, 2008, two men married in the state of California, filed suit against the United States, the State of California, and 'Does 1 through 1,000' alleging violations by the Federal Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA", 1 U.S.C. §7) of the Full Faith and Credit, Equal Protection, and Due Process clauses to the Constitution, as well as the rights to Privacy, Speech, Travel, and the Ninth Amendment to the Constitution. The case was originally filed in Superior Court of California for the County of Orange and removed to the US District Court for the Central District of California, Southern Division. The plaintiffs, represented by private counsel, alleged that DOMA discriminated along lines of gender and sexual orientation by prohibiting any requirement that any state recognize same sex marriages conducted in another state, and in turn permitting the limitation of federal benefits tied to marital status that are due those couples on such grounds. Plaintiffs also complained that the California state constitutional prohibition of same-sex marriage ("Proposition 8") violated the same set of rights as DOMA. These allegations had been brought twice before by the couple, but were dismissed or withdrawn for jurisdictional and technical reasons.

The portion of the case pursuing California law was dismissed as moot on July 25, 2009, since plaintiffs were already and continued to be legally married in the state of California. The Court, Judge David O. Carter, ultimately dismissed the portion of the case concerning DOMA on technical grounds on August 24, 2009, citing improper initial filing in state court (despite removal to proper federal court). The case is notable for the two different stances taken by the Department of Justice ("DOJ") during briefing. The DOJ initially defended the law substantively in briefing filed June 11, 2009, citing public policy considerations to validate DOMA's diminishment of the legal status of same-sex marriages in states where they are prohibited by law, and consequent limitation on the federal benefit rights afforded such couples whose marriages are not legal in all states. In later briefing filed on August 17, 2009, the DOJ withdrew support for the law, stating that it should be "repealed as a matter of policy" due to its "discriminatory" nature, but continued to defend it on the presumption of constitutionality afforded acts of Congress and its practice of defending federal statutes as long as reasonable arguments can be made in support of their constitutionality. This was an intermediate step towards the DOJ's later position that DOMA is unconstitutional.

Carlos Torres - 05/18/2013


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