Lawyers for the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives (BLAG) informed U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey White that they "prefer not" to participate in a pilot project to video-tape oral arguments at an October 21, 2011 hearing in Golinski v OPM, a federal challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).
The bankruptcy case that became one of many battlegrounds in the fight over the Defense of Marriage Act has come to an end, with the Justice Department and congressional Republicans bowing out of the fight.
On Friday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a brief strongly arguing that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional in a case brought by Lambda Legal and Morrison & Foerster LLP on behalf of Karen Golinski, a lesbian federal court employee denied medical coverage for her wife, whom she married when same-sex couples could do so in California. The DOJ had previously announced they would no longer defend DOMA, but this is the first legal filing in the country in which they have fully argued to a court that DOMA is unconstitutional. They asked the federal court not to dismiss Golinski's claim.
In reaction to the news that the law firm King & Spalding has withdrawn from representing House leadership in cases challenging the Defense of Marriage Act Lambda Legal issued the following statement from Legal Director Jon Davidson.
Today Lambda Legal and Morrison & Foerster LLP filed an amended complaint challenging the constitutionality of the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in its case representing Karen Golinski, a federal court employee denied spousal health benefits for her wife.
As you're clearly painfully aware, the so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is depriving thousands of legally married same-sex couples the rights and benefits that the federal government provides to different-sex couples. Indeed, the federal General Account Office has estimated that there are 1,138 federal laws that treat individuals differently based on whether they are married or not. But unfortunately, undoing this discriminatory piece of legislation will take some time.
