Court of Appeals for 2nd Circuit Strikes Down DOMA

Yet another U.S. Court of Appeals has struck down the federal Defense of Marriage Act as unconstitutional.  This time the ruling was handed down by the 2nd Circuit in the Edie Windsor (pictured above) case that challenged DOMA's discriminatory impact that caused Windsor to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in estate taxes following the death of her wife in contrast to heterosexual couples who would have paid no tax at all.  I have long maintained that the true sole underlying goal of DOMA and all other anti-gay laws and anti-gay constitutional amendments has been to punish and penalize gays for not subscribing tho Christianist religious beliefs.   All the other supposed reasons behind such laws is frankly bull shit.  It's all about religious belief and nothing else.  Here are highlights from BuzzFeed on yesterday's ruling:

The Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that defines "marriage" and "spouse" under federal law as only pertaining to marriages between one man and one woman, is unconstitutional, the federal appeals court out of New York ruled on Thursday.

The 2-1 opinion of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Edith Windsor's case came just three weeks after the three-judge panel heard oral arguments from the lawyers in the case. It is the second appeals court to hold the law unconstitutional, and the Supreme Court has several requests pending to resolve the constitutionality of the law.

The opinion — authored by the conservative chief judge of the Second Circuit, Dennis Jacobs — is another blow to the House Republican leadership, which has been defending the law since the Obama administration determined that the law is unconstitutional in February 2011.

Beyond striking down the law itself, the most significant development in today's ruling is that the Second Circuit held that laws that classify people based on sexual orientation, like DOMA, should be subjected to a heightened form of scrutiny when courts examine the government's claimed reasons for such laws. The holding that "intermediate scrutiny" applies makes the Second Circuit the first federal appeals court to do so. The First Circuit did not apply heightened scrutiny in its earlier decision striking down DOMA.

The Second Circuit, however, held:

In this case, all four factors justify heightened scrutiny: A) homosexuals as a group have historically endured persecution and discrimination; B) homosexuality has no relation to aptitude or ability to contribute to society; C) homosexuals are a discernible group with non-obvious distinguishing characteristics, especially in the subset of those who enter same-sex marriages; and D) the class remains a politically weakened minority.

Chief Judge Jacobs, appointed to the bench by President George H.W. Bush, was joined in his opinion by Judge Christopher Droney, an Obama appointee. The opinion, at points, is almost strident in its support for its conclusions. As to the history of discrimination, for example, he wrote:

It is easy to conclude that homosexuals have suffered a history of discrimination. Windsor and several amici labor to establish and document this history, but we think it is not much in debate.

Referring to the House Republican leadership, which is defending the law in court because it holds a 3-2 majority on the House's Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, Jacobs wrote:

BLAG argues that, unlike protected classes, homosexuals have not "suffered discrimination for longer than history has been recorded." But whether such discrimination existed in Babylon is neither here nor there. BLAG concedes that homosexuals have endured discrimination in this country since at least the 1920s. Ninety years of discrimination is entirely sufficient to document a "history of discrimination."

As to political powerlessness, one of the more hotly debated point at oral arguments, the majority opinion is again direct:

The question is not whether homosexuals have achieved political successes over the years; they clearly have. The question is whether they have the strength to politically protect themselves from wrongful discrimination.

 There's more, but you get the drift.  The Court basically ripped John Boehner and his cohorts a new one in rejecting their ultimately religious based arguments.