Friday, June 28, 2013

DOMA Done

DOMA's principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal.  The principal purpose is to impose inequality, not for other reasons like governmental efficiency. Responsibilities, as well as rights, enhance the dignity and integrity of the person.  And DOMA contrives to deprive some couples married under the laws of their State, but not other couples, of both rights and responsibilities. ...

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.  This opinion and its holding are confined to those lawful marriages.

-- Justice Anthony Kennedy in the majority opinion of the US Supreme Court, vacating a central aspect of the Defense Of Marriage Act, 26 June 2013

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