Supreme Court Rules DOMA Unconstitutional (And It Was A Tax Case!)

Kelly Phillips Erb for Forbes writes: Last December, the Supreme Court granted certiorari on two same sex marriage cases. Those cases includeHollingsworth v. Perry, a challenge to California’s controversial Proposition 8 measure, and a case out of New York, U.S. v Windsor, which considers the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Today, the Supreme Court is issuing opinions on these two matters. While the two matters, Proposition 8 and defense of DOMA, feel connected, on legal grounds, they’re very different. First up, DOMA:

DOMA was declared unconstitutional. And here’s a brief explanation (more coverage to come):

With respect to U.S. v Windsor – the DOMA case with a tax angle – it wasn’t  so much about the individual rights of folks to marry but the rights of states to write their own laws defining marriage.. Edith Windsor, a resident of New York, married Thea Spyer, her partner of 40 years, and that marriage was recognized by the state of New York. However, Spyder’s estate was required to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes on the transfer of her assets to Windsor because the federal government did not recognize same sex marriages because of DOMA. (There is no estate tax imposed on an estate left to a citizen spouse, no matter how large that estate is.)

Traditionally, the federal government has tended to defer to the the states’ interpretation of marriage. In fact, on the instructions for the federal form 1040, the IRS indicates that “state law governs whether you are married or legally separated under a divorce or separate maintenance decree.” But there’s a significant exception: “[f]or federal tax purposes, a marriage means only a legal union between a man and a woman as husband and wife, and the word “spouse” means a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.” That’s because of DOMA, which became law in 1996.

Today, the Supreme Court  said that isn’t okay, with the 5-4 majority opinion holding, “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”

Liberals and conservatives alike should cheer this ruling. It’s a victory for equal protection under the law but also for states’ rights. From the opinion:

DOMA’s history of enactment and its own text demonstrate that interference with the equal dignity of same-sex marriages, conferred by the States in the exercise of their sovereign power, was more than an incidental effect of the federal statute… DOMA’s principal effect is to identify and make unequal a subset of state-sanctioned marriages.

But be careful: this isn’t an affirmation that same sex marriage should be legal in every state. The Supreme Court could have addressed that issue in the California case, but it didn’t.  It is more than the federal government does not have the right to overturn a particular state’s decision in that case. Expect to see more activities by the individual states on this point – but that’s a good thing. The definition of marriage has always been in the purview of states – single sex marriage excepted – and it can now remain so.