berni_mccoy's Journal - DOMA Declared UNCONSTITUTIONAL by Ninth Circuit!

Not sure how this got missed here, and I apologize if someone has posted it.

Via Kos: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/11/...

Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the Ninth Circuit in an order Wednesday seems to have declared the half of DOMA that declares that a same-sex marriage cannot be a marriage under federal law or for purposes of granting federal benefits unconstitutional, a violation of the equal protection component of the due process guarantee of the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opin...
...

In sum, to the extent that the application of DOMA serves to preclude the provision of health insurance coverage to a same-sex spouse of a legally married federal employee because of the employee's and his or her spouse's sex or sexual orientation, DOMA, as applied, contravenes the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution and is therefore unconstitutional.

That's about as flat a declaration of the unconstitutionality of that part of DOMA as one can expect to see come from a court. (Note that it places no reliance on the fact that the employee in question was an employee of a federal court, as opposed to of the federal government in general.