SCOTUS Hearings

Highlights from the DOMA Supreme Court hearing:

1. The SCOTUS focused mostly on whether the court has jurisdiction to issue a ruling in this case.

During the period in which Roberta Kaplan, Edie Windsor's lawyer, presented arguments about the injustice of DOMA, there were not as many questions from the justices as expected. The Advocate describes how there were "unusual pockets of silence" during these arguments, "almost as if the justices understood those arguments and many, perhaps, seemed to accept that DOMA treats same-sex couples unfairly." If the court finds they don't have jurisdiction, they will not get to the question of whether DOMA is unconstitutional. However, in that case, the federal district court ruling would stand and Edie would, at the very least, get back the $363,000 she paid in estate taxes after her partner's death.

2. Paul Clement, the lawyer for the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, seemed to rewrite the history of why DOMA was passed.

Clement argued that DOMA passed because the federal government was trying to effect uniformity in how it treated same-sex couples while the states experimented with different types of unions. To which, Justice Kagan finally replied, “Well, is what happened in 1996 — and I'm going to quote from the House Report here — is that 'Congress decided to reflect an honor of collective moral judgment and to express moral disapproval of homosexuality.' Is that what happened in 1996?”

3. The question of "Why discriminate against LGBT people?" was never explicitly addressed by the side arguing against the repeal of DOMA.

“The single most striking thing was that both opposing counsels could not offer a single specific reason for why gay people — let alone gay couples — should be treated unequally under the law," Evan Wolfson, Freedom to Marry president and founder said. Instead, these counsels rather solely argued that the decision on marriage equality should be left up to the states and was not an issue of the federal government.

4. Memorable lines from Justices:

John Roberts: "You don’t doubt that the lobby supporting the enactment of same sex-marriage laws in different states is politically powerful, do you?… As far as I can tell, political figures are falling over themselves to endorse your side of the case."

Ruth Bader Ginsburg: "You’re saying, no, state said two kinds of marriage; the full marriage, and then this sort of skim-milk marriage."

The New Yorker's full list of most noteworthy quotes from the hearings can be found here.

Read the full transcript of the SCOTUS United States v. Windsor oral arguments here.