Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
The U.S. Supreme Court waited until late in the day to take advantage of the Friday news dump.
The U.S. Supreme Court announced Friday that it will consider whether California’s
ban on same-sex marriage (Prop. 8) is constitutional, HOLLINGSWORTH, DENNIS, ET AL. V. PERRY, KRISTIN M., ET AL. (12-144), and whether Congress may
withhold federal benefits from legally married same-sex couples (Section 3 of DOMA) by
defining marriage as only between a man and a woman, UNITED STATES V. WINDSOR, EDITH S., ET AL. (12-307). Supreme Court says it will hear same-sex marriage cases:
The court will hear arguments in the spring about about one of the
country’s most politically divisive social issues, with a decision by
June.
[According to SCOTUSblog: The arguments very likely will be March 25-27, and a
decision is very likely around June 27.]
The court will examine a key section of the 1996 Defense of Marriage
Act. The Obama administration announced in 2011 it was abandoning
defense of the law, and a string of lower courts has said it is
unconstitutional to deny federal benefits to same-sex couples who are
legally married in the states where they live while offering them to
opposite-sex married couples.
This marks the first time the
justices will hear arguments relating to same-sex marriage. Because the
DOMA case concerns couples who already are married under state law, the
case they selected would not require an answer to the broader
constitutional question of whether homosexuals must be allowed to marry.
The court also said it would review a lower court’s decision to
overturn Proposition 8, in which California voters in 2008 amended the
state’s constitution to ban same-sex marriage.