Marriage

At a hearing today, the Miami-Dade County Office of Property Appraisal agreed to reinstate the spousal homestead protections of Lambda Legal client Hal Birchfield, a gay widower previously denied protections against certain tax increases for the home he had shared with his husband because his marriage was not recognized at the time of his husband’s death.

Today, in a status conference with Lambda Legal in federal court in Chicago, the Department of Justice announced that the Social Security Administration (SSA) will apply the U.S. Supreme Court's recent landmark marriage ruling retroactively and process pending spousal benefits claims for same-sex couples who lived in states that did not previously recognize their marriages.

The heavens opened and wept tears of joy, opined the officiants, as LGBT couples married in a downpour, under rainbow-striped umbrellas at Old San Juan’s picturesque and historic Paseo de la Princesa.

Following the Supreme Court’s recent historic decision to grant same-sex couples throughout the United States the freedom to marry and the right to recognition of their marriages in Obergefell v. Hodges, many questions have surfaced about just how the ruling will affect same-sex couples and families. In an attempt to answer many of these questions, legal teams at Lambda Legal, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Freedom to Marry, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the National Center for Lesbian Rights (NCLR) and the National Center for Transgender Equality (NCTE) teamed up to develop a joint FAQ.