Skip to footer

Major gay marriage cases in federal court and where they stand

Battles over same-sex marriage have been raging in the federal courts for several years. Two could reach the US Supreme Court within a year: one challenging California's ban on gay marriage under Proposition 8, and the other seeking to invalidate the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Here are the cases to follow.

4. Other challenges to DOMA in federal court

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File
Suzanne Artis (l.) and Geraldine Artis of Clinton, Conn., who are married and have children, listen on Capitol Hill in Washington on July 20, 2011, during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing to assess the impact of the Defense of Marriage Act.

• Dragovich v. US Department of Treasury (10cv1564): In a challenge in Oakland, Calif., involving federal tax benefits offered for medical insurance for opposite-sex spouses, but not same-sex spouses, US District Judge Claudia Wilken struck down DOMA on May 25, saying it was based on “moral condemnation” of same-sex couples and violated constitutional standards in denying benefits to same-sex couples married under California law.

• McLaughlin v. Panetta (11cv11905) is a class action suit in federal court in Boston challenging DOMA on behalf of US military service members and their same-sex spouses who are denied the same federal benefits awarded to opposite-sex spouses.

• Joanne Pedersen v. OPM (10cv1750) is a DOMA challenge before a federal judge in New Haven, Conn. Ms. Pedersen is seeking access to the same benefits with her same-sex spouse as are offered to opposite-sex married spouses.

• Edith Windsor v. US (10cv8435) is a DOMA case before a federal judge in Manhattan. The suit challenges an Internal Revenue Service requirement that Ms. Windsor pay federal inheritance tax on her same-sex spouse's estate. Heterosexual married couples at the same income level are not subject to the estate tax under current law.

4 of 4
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.