Feds defy order to provide same-sex benefits

[Kadie]

Feds defy order to provide same-sex benefits
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer

Friday, December 18, 2009


(12-18) 17:45 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- The Obama administration refused Friday to follow a federal judge's order to provide insurance benefits to the wife of a lesbian court employee in San Francisco and said its hands were tied by a discriminatory law.

"This issue shows exactly why Congress needs to repeal" the law, which prohibits federal benefits to same-sex couples, government lawyer Elaine Kaplan said in a message to attorneys for court employee Karen Golinski.

One of Golinski's lawyers, Jenny Pizer of the gay-rights group Lambda Legal, said Kaplan's response was "something we might have expected from the Bush or Reagan administration, and not from a 'fierce advocate' of LBGT rights," as President Obama has described himself.

The case is one of two in which the Office of Personnel Management has balked at orders by judges on the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to provide coverage to the same-sex spouses of federal employees.

Golinski, a staff attorney at the appeals court's headquarters, married her partner, Amy Cunninghis, after the state Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in California in May 2008. The court preserved 18,000 such marriages this May while upholding Proposition 8, the November 2008 ballot measure that undid the earlier ruling.

Golinski applied in September 2008 to include Cunninghis in the family insurance policy, which already covered the couple's 6-year-old son. Court officials refused, citing the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages.



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/12/18/MNSN1B6ISS.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0a6Hwz3Tc

[bigwillq]

1. Gotta love that fierce advocate of ours.

:mad:

[dbonds]

2. I think we are the victims of bait and switch

[MannyGoldstein]

3. The Fierce Audacity Of "Nah-Nah, My Fingers Were Crossed!!!"

This is really becoming pathetic and weird.

[Jamastiene]

4. I'm not surprised.

Some of us tried to point the homophobic policies of this administration out a long time ago. All we got was "It's just a two minute prayer."

[benld74]

5. DOMA 1996 is,,,

is unconstitutional on several grounds:

DOMA exceeds congressional authority in violation of the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.<19>
Congress over-reached its authority under the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
The law illegally discriminates and violates the Equal Protection Clause.
The law violates the fundamental right to marriage under the due process clause

[bluestateguy]

6. I wonder if you could also make a contract clause argument against it too

and there is also a states rights argument against it too: the federal government does not marry anybody and has no standing to refuse to recognize a benefit that 5 states (and counting) currently confer.