Politics & Government

'From Outcasts to Equals': SLP Legislators React to Supreme Court DOMA Decision

The Supreme Court struck down DOMA and punted on Prop 8. Read what local legislators had to say.

Written by Mike Schoemer and Zac Farber

Six weeks after Minnesota became the 12th state to legalize same-sex marriage, the Supreme Court of the United States has ruled the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

The Supreme Court of the United States ruled twice in favor of same-sex marriage advocates Wednesday morning, stating the Defense of Marriage Act was in direct violation of the United States Constitution and ruling that California’s Proposition 8 case had been decided by lower courts, dismissing the appeal.

The historic decision on the federal DOMA paves way for couples to share in hundreds of benefits bestowed by federal tax codes to couples married in states that recognize same-sex marriage.

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Meanwhile, the dismissal serves as a victory for so-called gay marriage advocates out west as it clears the way for same-sex couples to continue to marry in California, coming five years after that state passed an amendment to the state constitution not recognizing those unions

Minnesota joins that list in a little more than month, Aug. 1., when the state government will recognize same-sex unions. Legislation passed the Minnesota House and Senate and was signed into law on May 12.  

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State Rep. Rep. Steve Simon (DFL-St. Louis Park) said he was "very happy" with the court's decision.

"Really overnight, same-sex married couples went from outcasts to equals because the federal government now will recognize them," Simon said. "On the other case, the Prop 8 case, though written in technical terms on a narrow, standing basis, it really has the effect of making the nation’s largest state home once again to marriage equality."

State Sen. Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park) also said he was pleased with the ruling.

"Now all married Minnesotans will receive federal benefits regardless of their sexual orientation," he wrote in an email. I believe that the federal government should recognize marriage as between two persons. We should end this discrimination at the federal level now that we have ended it at the state level."

“So proud,” Tweeted Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota’s Fifth District, “the Supreme Court put America one step further on the path to marriage equality by overturning DOMA.”

Ellison in the past has likened the march for gay marriage rights to the 1960s civil rights movement.

Meanwhile, conservative Sixth District Republican Rep. Michele Bachmann said God, not the Supreme Court, defines marriage.

“No man, not even a Supreme Court, can undo what a holy God has instituted,” Bachmann wrote in a statement to the press. “What the Court has done will undermine the best interest of children and the best interests of the United States."

President Barack Obama, who aligned with the State Judicial Department to defend DOMA when he first took office, reversed course in 2011, asking the DOMA to stop taking on cases challenging the act.

Today, the president said, he was in favor of the SCOTUS decision.

"When all Americans are treated as equal—no matter who they are or whom they love—we are all more free,” Obama stated via social media.

The Twin Cities GLBT population will celebrate the decisions –both that of the Supreme Court and this year’s legislation in Minnesota – this weekend in Minneapolis with Gay Pride weekend.A complete schedule can be found here.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the decision for the majority, writing that “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.”  

He was joined in the majority by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

The Proposition 8 decision was written by Chief Justice John Roberts.

“We have never before upheld the standing of a private party to defend the constitutionality of a state statute when state officials have chosen not to,” Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “We decline to do so for the first time here.”

State Senator Scott Dibble (DFL – Minneapolis), the author of the bill that legalized same-sex marriage in Minnesota, released the following statement on the decisions:

“Today I am happy to be considered married to my husband in the eyes of the federal government. This decision recognizes a simple fact: the freedom in the Constitution means freedom for everyone.

Now all states with the freedom to marry, and soon many Minnesotans, can look forward to getting the more than 1,138 federal rights benefits and responsibilities that come with marriage. Now it is time to get on with the business of working hard, paying our taxes, building our lives, fully participating in our communities.

I am also overjoyed that loving couples, many of them our close friends, will be allowed once again to form their families and get married in California, just like my husband Richard and I were able to do in 2008. Today love prevails!”



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