Win for Equality: SCOTUS Rules DOMA Unconstitutional

developing…

Photo: chris dilts/cc/flickr In a victory for marriage equality, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on Wednesday that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)–a federal law that deprived legally married same-sex couples of benefits given to other married couples–is unconstitutional and “a deprivation of equal liberty.”

Writing the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”

He continued:

DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper. DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Kennedy was joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan.

* * *

____________________

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License

This article originally appeared on: Common Dreams