A Bombshell for DOMA – Judge in California Challenges Executive Branch

  by  Melanie Nathan:  I do not go a single day without wondering how the Federal Government can usurp the rights I have been given by my State,  which rights in essence are nothing more than civil rights providing me with rights equal to my fellow Americans.  Doma is a Con, and America has fallen for it, including President Obama.  What will happen if we disregard DOMA; if we simply pretend it is not there?  The only way we can do that is to keep asserting our rights and filing in the forms that they say do not apply to us. 

 Time.com reports a bombshell and a big kick in the side for the Obama Administration.  A little hole in DOMA which may lead to a blow out for the iniquitous law:

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski of the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeal issued an unusual and exceedingly profound challenge to the power of the Executive Branch, by doing something not even the most sweeping state-court constitutional decisions on gay marriage have been  able to do: put the issue of equal treatment for gays to President Barack Obama in a way he will find hard to ignore.  

 ”The Office of Personnel Management shall cease at once its interference with the jurisdiction of this tribunal. “  He gave the Obama Administration 30 days to permit Karen Golinski, a lawyer employed by the Ninth Circuit, to include the woman she married under California law last year on her family health-insurance plan. “Some branch must have the final say on a law’s meaning. At least as to laws governing judicial employees, that is entirely our duty and our province. We would not be a co-equal branch of government otherwise.”

Will President Obama defend the actions of the FEDS and refer to the Defense of Marriage Act, a policy that Obama has consistently said that he is against (even though the Obama Administration has defended the law on several occasions since his taking office), and run the risk of Judge Kuzinski taking further legal action?  Or, will they concede that the Office of Personnel Management overstepped its bounds by interfering with the judicial branch, and flirt with conceding too that DOMA itself is overreaching and infringes not just on this one Court’s ability to make rulings independently, but a state’s right to autonomy, and, as part of that, its right to define marriage by its own constitution as expressly stated as part of the Defense of Marriage Act?

The unusual order is only incidentally about gay rights — the judge sidestepped the constitutional question about gays entirely — and is instead a fiery defense of the rights of the judiciary to manage its own employees. But if the Administration chooses to fight the order, it will have to tread carefully to avoid looking to gay-rights advocates like it is waging war in defense of a statute — the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) — that candidate Obama had said should be overturned.

“Kozinski’s order comes at an interesting time in the Ninth Circuit. It was matched last week by an order by a fellow judge on the appeals court, who ruled that Brad Levenson, a public defender working for the federal courts, was entitled to back pay to cover costs associated with buying separate insurance policies he purchased for Tony Sears, whom he married under California law before last year’s Prop 8 made gay marriage illegal there. That state constitutional amendment will itself be on trial beginning in January, when a U.S. district judge in San Francisco will hold the first federal jury trial on whether the U.S. Constitution requires that gay couples be given the opportunity to be married. As chief judge of the circuit, Kozinski will then almost certainly hear the Prop 8 case when it goes on appeal.”

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1942791-1,00.html#ixzz0Y76ZmcT3

So I say if you believe you are entitled Fill in that Form and help put another nail in the coffin signaling the DEMISE OF DOMA.  By the way keep your eye on this one.

Blogged by Melanie Nathan, nathan@privatecourts.com