In a huge victory for marriage equality, today a federal judge in Boston found that Section 3 of DOMA violates both the 5th and 10th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Below is a link to the decision in the Gill case that was brought by GLAD (challenging Section 3 on equal protection grounds). I haven’t been able to find the other decision yet (brought by AG Coakley challenging Section 3 on 10th Amendment grounds).
For all you legal geeks, an interesting opinion from Judge Tauro. He does not address whether strict scrutiny should be applied (and, relatedly, whether gays and lesbians are a suspect class) because he finds that Section 3 fails a rationale basis test.
From what I have read and seen, it appears that in the Commonwealth’s case, Judge Tauro found that it is within a state’s rights to determine whether to afford same-sex couples marital rights and that by enacting DOMA, the federal government encroached on that right, thereby violating the 10th Amendment.
http://www.glad.org/uploads/do…
and of course Coakley’s office for having taken this on as well as (hopefully) the other AG’s around New England who will be.
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p>and hats off to activist Paul Sousa who has pushed and collected commitments from candidates for AG’s in other states that they would sign on if elected. Good forethought here.