Tag Archives: DOMA

Immigrants who are part of stable, same-sex couples in the United States will face a lower chance of deportation if the policies of the Department of Homeland Security and the Obama administration are actually written down. Immigration policy promoted by the Obama Administration would devote fewer resources to sniffing out immigrant lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people who are married to U.S. citizens. Now, prompted by Democratic lawmakers, DHS is being asked to put that policy into official regulations, …

Same-sex couples who live in states that don’t recognize gay marriage or civil unions are out of luck when it comes to estate taxes, facing much higher rates when one partner passes away than do their peers who are legally married. The discriminatory nature of tax laws was illustrated by a recent case in Pennsylvania, where Marie Himmelberger’s longtime partner Sharon Warnock passed away in 2010. Himmelberger and Warnock were in fact legally joined in New Jersey after a 2007 …

  The Defense of Marriage Act has been ruled unconstitutional by two federal courts, but LGBT marriages have yet to receive federal recognition and the rights and protections that come with it. One area in which this impacts same-sex couples is estate planning and inheritance.         Mobile users click here to view the video.         Lawyers.com Supervising Producer John McCarthy interviews attorney Joan Burda, an estate planning expert who focuses on LGBT issues. Burda …

By this time next year, we will have a national court ruling in favor of same-sex marriage. Two federal appeals courts have already ruled that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional, and the next stop is the U.S. Supreme Court, which will also have to throw out this discriminatory law. Two federal appeals courts have granted a huge victory in favor of gays and lesbians by striking down the Defense of Marriage Act because it illegally targets gays …

Institutionalized discrimination by Uncle Sam against the LGBT community is no more, says a federal court in Boston. The First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled today that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law that specifically denies federal marriage benefits to gay couples regardless of whether they are legally married in their state, is unconstitutional. Opponents of the law, including the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), had argued that the federal government had never before interfered with …