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June 05, 2012 at 02:06 PM
The federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996 (DOMA) is irrational and should have no effect on the ability of government employees in California to participate in state public employee long-term care insurance (LTCI) benefits programs, according to a federal judge in Oakland, Calif.
U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken, a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, gave that assessment in an order awarding summary judgment in favor of the state government employees and others who brought the suit, Dragovich et al. vs. the U.S. Treasury Department et al.
The public employees won the judgment against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS); the U.S. Treasury Department, which is the parent of the IRS; the board of administration of the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CALPERS); and the officials in charge of those entities.
The plaintiffs in the case include all present and future CALPERS members who are in same-sex marriages and registered domestic partnerships, together with their spouses and partners, who want to have the same kind of access to the CALPERS LTCI program that same-sex spouses and same-sex partners get.
Section 3 of DOMA of 1996 defines the terms “spouse” and “marriage.”
Another law, Section 7702B(f) of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), forbids a state-sponsored benefit plan from qualifying for the usual state benefit plan tax breaks if it provides spousal benefits for the same-sex spouses of public employees.
Because federal officials refused to defend the constitutionality of DOMA Section 3 and HIPAA Section 7702B(f), Wilken let the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives (BLAG) defend the law.
BLAG lawyers objected, for example, to the court decision to let the class of plaintiffs include domestic partners as well as spouses.
