Carlos Ball sees long- and short-term effects of high court’s DOMA, Proposition 8 rulings
As hundreds of advocates rallied on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, the court issued a pair of rulings striking down a 1996 law denying federal benefits to legally married same-sex couples and paving the way for California to legalize same-sex marriage.
“What this means, in plain terms, is that same-sex couples who are legally married will be entitled to equal treatment under federal law – with regard to, for example, income taxes and Social Security benefits,” legal analyst and editor Amy Howe wrote on SCOTUSblog, the Supreme Court blog.
She was referring to Windsor v. United States, which addressed the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). By a margin of 5-4, the justices ruled that the act violates the U.S. Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, and declared it invalid.
In a second case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, the court ruled, also by a margin of 5-4, that opponents of California’s marriage-equality law do not have the legal standing to defend the state’s so-called Proposition 8, in essence keeping an earlier trial ruling in place and freeing same-sex couples to marry there.
Rutgers Today turned to Carlos Ball, a professor at Rutgers School of Law-Newark, to parse the long- and short-term implications of the rulings. Ball has written several books on LGBT issues, including The Right to be Parents: LGBT Families and the Transformation of Parenthood (NYU Press, 2012).
Rutgers Today: Early analyses are referring to the decisions as a huge step forward for the gay-rights movement. In lay-person’s terms, could you sum up for us the two decisions the court announced today and the issues they addressed?
Carlos Ball: In Windsor, the court dealt with the question of whether Congress had the constitutional authority to withhold federal rights and benefits to same-sex couples who are married under state law. The court, in answering “no,” emphasized that the very purpose of DOMA was to denigrate the marriages of same-sex couples and to relegate them to a second-tier of marriages, something which the constitution does not permit.
It is important to emphasize that Windsor did not address the question of whether same-sex couples have a federal constitutional right to marry. That bigger question was presented by Hollingsworth v. Perry. But the court today refused to address the issue because it concluded that those who placed Proposition 8 on the ballot box did not have the right to appeal the trial court’s ruling striking down the state’s same-sex marriage ban. Although the precise impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling is not entirely clear, it may very well mean that same-sex couples will soon be free to marry in California.
Rutgers Today: Tell us a little about the benefits legally married same-sex couples can now reap, such as Social Security and income tax benefits. Do they go into effect immediately?
Carlos Ball: Federal law makes available more than 1,000 legal rights and benefits to married couples. Those rights run the gamut and include everything from Social Security survival benefits to certain tax benefits and exemptions to Medicare and other health care benefits. Although the court today ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional, it will take some time (weeks, perhaps months) for the federal government to implement the changes into law.
Rutgers Today: Troy Stevenson, executive director of Garden State Equality, points out in an e-mail to supporters that 13 states and the District of Columbia now allow same-sex marriage, meaning that 30 percent of American live in places with marriage equality. New Jersey recognizes civil unions but not same-sex marriage. What impact do you think these decisions will have on our state’s legislators and governor?
Carlos Ball: The Windsor ruling benefits only same-sex couples who are legally married under state law. Since same-sex couples in New Jersey cannot marry, following Governor Christie’s veto of the same-sex marriage law in 2012, the Supreme Court’s opinion will have no direct legal impact on New Jersey same-sex couples. But the ruling may very well have a political impact because it will give further ammunition to those who claim, correctly in my view, that civil unions are an unacceptable second-class form of legal recognition and that true equality requires that same-sex couples be permitted to marry. Until that happens, same-sex couples in New Jersey will not be eligible to receive the more than 1,000 federal rights and benefits that accompany marriage.
Rutgers Today: What questions, if any, do the decisions leave unanswered?
Carlos Ball: The question that these decisions leave unanswered is in many ways the biggest question of all: Do lesbians and gay men have a federal constitutional right to marry the individuals of their choice? The court made clear in both opinions today that that question will have to wait for another day.
Rutgers Today: Many of the Supreme Court decisions announced this week seemed to lean toward the conservative majority, including rulings on the Voting Rights Act. What factors do you see as having played a role in the court’s rulings in Windsor and Perry?
Carlos Ball: I suppose one way of looking at this week’s Supreme Court rulings is that a majority of the justices believe that we have made sufficient progress in eradicating race discrimination but not enough progress in eradicating sexual orientation discrimination. My own view is that the Voting Rights Act and DOMA are two very different statutes. The former aims to prevent discrimination, while the latter codified discrimination into law. Although I think it was appropriate for the court to strike DOMA down, I believe that it erred in concluding that racial discrimination in voting is a thing of the past.