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BOSTON - Today, Attorney General Martha Coakley filed a lawsuit in
United States District Court (D. Mass.) challenging the constitutionality of
Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”). The law, which
defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, unfairly excludes
more than 16,000 Massachusetts married same-sex couples and their families from
critically important rights and protections based on marital status. The
complaint alleges that DOMA, which affects more than 1,100 federal statutory
provisions, violates the United States Constitution by interfering with the
Commonwealth’s sovereign authority to define and regulate the marital status of
its residents. The complaint also alleges that DOMA exceeds Congress’s
authority under the Spending Clause because Congress does not have a valid
reason for requiring Massachusetts to treat married same-sex couples differently
from all other married couples.
“Today, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts takes an important step toward
ensuring equality and fairness for its citizens and maintaining our authority as
a sovereign state,” said Attorney General Coakley. “DOMA affects
residents of Massachusetts in very real and very negative ways by depriving
access to important economic safety nets and other protections that couples
count on when they marry and that help them to take care of one another and
their families. DOMA also directly and fundamentally interferes with
Massachusetts’s right as a state sovereign to determine the marital status of
its residents.”
The Commonwealth’s complaint alleges that Section 3 of DOMA unlawfully
creates separate and unequal categories of married individuals in Massachusetts,
due to the fact that only different-sex married couples are considered married
under federal law. Among other things, DOMA prohibits married individuals
in same-sex relationships from taking advantage of the ability to file a joint
federal tax return, Social Security survivor benefits, guaranteed leave from
work to care for sick spouses, flexible spending accounts for medical expenses
of spouses, and gift tax and estate tax exemptions for spouses. These
rights and protections affect all facets of life from the workplace to
healthcare to retirement, and every married person is affected significantly by
these laws.
The Attorney General’s Office further contends that Section 3 of DOMA
unlawfully requires Massachusetts to disregard valid marriages in its
implementation of federally funded programs. The complaint focuses
specifically on two programs, MassHealth and veterans’ cemeteries.
“It is unconstitutional for the federal government to discriminate, as it
does because of DOMA’s restrictive definition of marriage. It is also
unconstitutional for the federal government to decide who is married and to
create a system of first- and second-class marriages. The federal government
cannot require states, such as Massachusetts, to further the discrimination
through federal programs, either. The time has come for this injustice to
end.”
The complaint specifically highlights two programs in Massachusetts that are
impacted by DOMA. The two programs are MassHealth, the Commonwealth’s
Medicaid program which offers healthcare coverage to low- and moderate-income
residents of Massachusetts, and the burial of Massachusetts veterans and their
spouses at cemeteries owned and operated by the Massachusetts Department of
Veterans’ Services (DVS).
The Attorney General’s Office is seeking an order that the federal government
be prohibited from enforcing Section 3 of DOMA against Massachusetts.
Additionally, it seeks a declaration that Section 3 of DOMA, as applied to
Massachusetts as well as MassHealth and DVS, is unconstitutional.
DOMA was enacted in 1996 in anticipation of the possibility that Hawaii might
license marriages between same-sex couples. Prior to the enactment of
DOMA, the federal government honored the marriages recognized by the states for
the purposes of any federal program or statute. Section 3 of DOMA created,
for the first time, a federal definition of marriage and, with it, a federal
limitation on marriage.
In 2004, following the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court’s decision in
Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, Massachusetts became the first
state to license marriages between individuals in same-sex
relationships. Since May 2004, more than 16,000 same-sex couples have
been married in Massachusetts.
Currently, six states – Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa, Vermont, Maine and
New Hampshire – permit, or will soon permit, qualified, committed same-sex
couples to obtain marriage licenses. In addition, California
continues to honor the marriage licenses that were extended to over 18,000
same-sex couples prior to the passage of Proposition 8. Two other states,
New York and Rhode Island, as well as the District of Columbia honor marriages
between same-sex couples that are celebrated in Massachusetts. Seven
states – California, Nevada, Hawaii, New Jersey, Washington, Wisconsin and
Oregon – recognize domestic partnerships or civil unions between same-sex
couples. Twenty-nine other states have enacted what are commonly called
mini-DOMAs, which ban marriage between couples of the same sex.
This matter is being handled by Maura T. Healey, Chief of Attorney General’s
Civil Rights Division, and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan B. Miller, also
of Attorney General Coakley’s Civil Rights Division.
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Download and view the complaint:
DOMA Complaint
(PDF)