US Supreme Court ruled Wednesday legally married same-sex couples should get the same federal benefits as heterosexual couples.
The court invalidated a provision of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (Doma) that prevented married gay couples from receiving a range of tax, health and retirement benefits that are generally available to married people by 5-4 votes.
Same-sex marriage has been adopted by 12 states and the District of Columbia, and 18,000 couples were married in California during a brief period when same-sex unions were legal there.
The court has yet to release its decision on California’s ban on same-sex marriage.
Justice Anthony Kennedy who wrote the majority opinion said: “Under Doma, same-sex married couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways.”
“Doma’s principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal,” said Justice Kennedy, who was joined by the court’s four liberal justices, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented.
Scalia read his dissent aloud and said the court should not have decided the case. But, given that it did, he said, “We have no power under the Constitution to invalidate this democratically adopted legislation.”
