Federal Appeals Court: DOMA unconstitutional

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, federal appeals court declares

By Robert Barnes, Updated: Thursday, May 31, 5:32 PM

A federal appeals court panel in Boston declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional on Thursday, but said that only the Supreme Court will be able to settle the question of whether the federal government must recognize same-sex marriages from states where such unions are legal.

This is the most blatantly unconstitutional and unprecedented part of DOMA. Let's hope the Supreme Court isn't feeling too results-oriented on this one when they hear it.

How so?  I can't imagine any consistent constitutional argument that would require the Federal government to leave the definition of marriage as used by the Federal government to each individual State and yet not also require that all States recognize a marriage contracted in any other State.

Under any argument that I can conceive of, if DOMA were found unconstitutional then it would force every State to recognize gay marriage.

and yet that seems to be the argument that the appeals court made: that the feds should respect the states' designation here. That's a position I like, but whether it stands up to constitutional scrutiny I'm not sure.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

Under any argument that I can conceive of, if DOMA were found unconstitutional then it would force every State to recognize gay marriage.

and yet that seems to be the argument that the appeals court made: that the feds should respect the states' designation here. That's a position I like, but whether it stands up to constitutional scrutiny I'm not sure.

The decision is based upon an equal protection framework and I don't see any way that it can be upheld without establishing a precedent that could be used to force the states that do not allow for same-sex marriage to recognize the validity a same-sex marriage entered into in another state.

The First Circuit can claim all it wants that their decision is narrowly aimed at the Federal government, but it is not.

Definitely seems like they want to have their cake and eat it too - there's a federalist argument here, and an equal protection argument, and they don't mix very well in less there's a novel argument here I'm missing. I seized on the former in the reports I was hearing:

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That definitely sounds like they are prioritizing federalism, which would allow states to not recognize same-sex marriage, "equal protection" be damned.

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So if Congress made a law saying the feds would recognize same sex marriages from all states where legal, but say specifically other states are not required to - would that be struck down as well?