Last year the Obama administration caused a controversy when they announced they would no longer defend certain parts of the Defense Of Marriage Act in federal court, saying to do so would be unconstitutional.
Now, in a similar move, the administration has declared it will no longer defend in court, laws which deny legally married same sex couples in the military the same benefits as heterosexual married partners. This is in response to a Massachusetts lawsuit filed by the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network on behalf of a lesbian couple.
Attorney General Eric Holder wrote the following in a letter to Congress…
The legislative record of these provisions contains no rationale for providing veterans’ benefits to opposite-sex couples of veterans but not to legally married same-sex spouses of veterans. Neither the Department of Defense nor the Department of Veterans Affairs identified any justifications for that distinction that would warrant treating these provisions differently from Section 3 of DOMA.
Holder points out that the benefits which are in dispute are…
“medical and dental benefits, basic housing allowances, travel and transportation allowances, family separation benefits, military identification cards, visitation rights in military hospitals, survivor benefits and the right to be buried together in military cemeteries.”
