California Bankruptcy Court Holds DOMA Unconstitutional

In another ridiculous display of judicial activism, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, in an opinion signed by 20 of the court’s 25 judges, has held that Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutionally bars a married gay couple from filing a joint bankruptcy petition. The court absurdly relied on the arguments for heightened scrutiny of sexual-orientation discrimination contained in Attorney General Eric Holder’s letter announcing the new position of the DoJ on DOMA.

The Court wrote:

Although individual members of Congress have every right to express their views and the views of their constituents with respect to their religious beliefs and principles and their personal standards of who may marry whom, this court cannot conclude that Congress is entitled to solemnize such views in the laws of this nation in disregard of the views, legal status and living arrangements of a significant segment of our citizenry that includes the Debtors in this case. To do so violates the Debtors’ right to equal protection of those laws embodied in the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment.

Visit http://www.stevelackner.com/2011/02/radical-position-taken-by-doj-and.html to see my analysis of that announcement. For more on a Federal District Court in Boston that also ruled DOMA unconstitutional in 2010 visit http://www.stevelackner.com/2010/07/boston-federal-district-court-wrongly.html

Because this recent decision is based on the very faulty assumption that there is a Constitutional right to gay marriage that all State's must adhere to, visit http://www.stevelackner.com/2011/04/why-perry-v-schwarzenegger-2010-which.html for my analysis of Perry v. Schwarzenegger.
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