Something tells me the situation on DOMA is going to be murky for
a while:
The Justice Department says a lesbian federal employee should still be denied permission to add her wife to her health insurance despite the Obama administration's refusal to defend a federal law banning recognition of same-sex marriages.
Government lawyers told a federal judge Monday in San Francisco that the administration will still enforce the Defense of Marriage Act until it is struck down by a court or repealed by Congress. They say its new position on the act's unconstitutionality is irrelevant.
I posted about Golinski's case a while back and how the DOJ refused to follow the judge's order to give Golinski's partner health care benefits because the judge was acting in his capacity as an employer, not a judge (the judge disagreed with them, but apparently that's still being fought out). But I wonder why the DOJ is waiting for DOMA to be "struck down by a court" when it was struck down last year in Massachusetts v. HHS and Gill v. OPM.
Speaking of which, the DOJ told the court in those cases that it would no longer defend DOMA:
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Repealed by Congress or struck down by a court? Huh. That's surprising to me after their insistence that DADT be repealed by Congress, not by the courts. I get that there would be a process with repeal, but wouldn't the IRS and other bureaucracies involved in federal marriage benefits need time to adjust as well? There aren't soldiers to train, but paperwork would have to change and hulabaloo to deal with as well.
I'm all for courts striking it down, though. I sure that's where it will happen.
I think they're deliberately trying to muddy the waters so it can all be brought together in one big ole lawsuit for the Supremes. Right now the confusion is beneficial to the administration. No one knows what's really going on, they look like they did their job of defending the government, they know the confusion will help them lose and score political points, and it's not something that the general LGBT community will get all worked up over since no one understands it until they hand us another small victory and tell us to cherish it and make it grow.
I, too, Alex, am confused, since, as you noted, Judge Tauro did strike down Section 3 in two separate (but closely related) cases on two separate constitutional grounds.