San Francisco judge: DOMA ‘discriminatory’ for denying same-sex partner benefits
James Ware, District Judge (Photo credit: Wikipedia)SAN FRANCISCO, April 11, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A federal judge in San Francisco has called federal law defining marriage as between a man and a woman discriminatory for preventing partner benefits from going to a federal employee’s homosexual partner.
On Tuesday, Chief U.S. District Judge James Ware said that the government’s guarantee of a “discrimination-free workplace” was violated when Christopher Nathan, a law clerk for U.S. Magistrate Maria Elena James, attempted but failed to obtain insurance benefits for the male lover once recognized by the state of California as his “spouse,” reports the San Francisco Gate.
Although same-sex “marriage” is not legally recognized in California, the state has continued to treat as valid marriage licenses issued to homosexual couples during the 5-month window that the practice was legal in 2008.
Because the ruling was part of the court’s employee dispute-resolution program, Ware concluded simply by ordering a court clerk to reimburse Nathan for insurance premium costs.
This is not the first time that DOMA, which currently awaits the outcome of a challenge in a federal appeals court in Boston, has been questioned or even dismissed as irrelevant in a U.S. court
In February 2009, two judges in California’s 9th Circuit Court disregarded the 1996 federal law in resolving similar court staffer disputes, with one declaring the law “unconstitutional.”
