There are two gay marriage cases being argued before the Supreme Court at the end of the month. You can get most of the amicus briefs on Hollingsworth v Perry, which concerns whether the 14th Amendment prevents California from defining marriage as only between a man and a woman, here. The amicus briefs on United States v Windsor, which concerns federal recognition of same sex marriages in states where they are allowed are here. Hooray for SCOTUSblog. There is one brief on both cases that you won’t find there. That would be Ellen’s brief. Ellen’s brief is here. Ellen of course is Ellen DeGeneres.
Ellen started off wondering why people were sending their briefs to the Supreme Court. What could nine people do with all that underwear ? Ellen married Portia De Rossi during the brief window of time that same sex marriage was allowed in California. They celebrated their fourth anniversary last fall
She does not think they hurt anybody else’s marriage. She checked with their neighbors. That more or less covers Hollingsworth v Perry. The Windsor case concerns Section 3 of DOMA, which denies federal recognition to her marriage.
But even though Portia and I got married in the short period of time when it was legal in California, there are 1,138 federal rights for married couples that we don’t have, including some that protect married people from losing their homes, or their savings or custody of their children.
You would think with all the talk about the 1,138 rights there would be a list somewhere. Well, if I was more of a geek, I would make one for you. What you have to do is take this report from 1997 and update it with this report from 2004, which lists things that were either repealed or added. I have to say that the number is actually a little inflated. Included, for example, are Sections 1532, 1534 and 1536 of Title 38. Those sections cover pensions for surviving spouses of veterans of the Civil War, the Indian Wars and the Spanish-American War. Nonetheless, DOMA messes with a lot of stuff not just taxes, but all sorts of pensions that are actually being collected, health benefits, immigration and more.
I’m really pleased that Ellen has come out with this brief even if she did not check out all 1,138 rights to see how many were applicable to her or anybody at all for that matter. I have been following same sex tax issues since my earliest blogging days way back in 2010 and my greatest blogging fantasy has been to be interviewed by Ellen. I’ve pretty much given up on it, but it would be an awful lot of fun to go through all 1,138 with her.
You can follow me on twitter @peterreillycpa.
Originally published on Forbes.com Mar 6th, 2013