Today, the Obama administration filed its brief in the GLAD case, Gill et. al. v. OPM. No surprise, the Dept. of Justice once again defended the law, albeit without the hateful language used back in June. This brief was originally due at the end of June, but in the wake of the backlash from the Smelt case DOMA brief, the government asked for an extension. Today, the DOJ moved to dismiss the case altogether.
Here’s how it starts:
As the President has stated previously, this Administration does not support DOMA as a matter of policy, believes that it is discriminatory, and supports its repeal. Consistent with the rule of law, however, the Department of Justice has long followed the practice of defending federal statutes as long as reasonable arguments can be made in support of their constitutionality, even if the Department disagrees with a particular statute as a policy matter, as it does here.1 The law of this Circuit requires that this Court find that DOMA is constitutionally permissible because Congress could reasonably have concluded that DOMA is rationally related to legitimate governmental interests.
John and I, along with many others, don’t agree that the administration has to defend the law. Be that as it may, the Department of Justice is defending DOMA with an array of legal arguments. Importantly, the DOJ thinks DOMA should be subject to the “rational basis review,’ which is the lowest level of judicial scrutiny. All the government must do is prove a “rational basis” for the legislation meaning “a legislative policy must be upheld so long as there is any reason- ably conceivable set of facts that could provide a rational basis for it, including ones that Congress itself did not advance or consider. DOMA satisfies this standard.”
This case, brought by GLAD, is considered by many to be one of the best legal challenges to DOMA.
I’ve embedded the brief:
2009 09 18 DOMA DOJ Motion to Dismiss http://d.scribd.com/ScribdViewer.swf?document_id=19897522&access_key=key-9pcek3ljfuml7tlfoc0&page=1&version=1&viewMode=
