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Could the Senate still include LGBT binational couples in the immigration reform bill?
By Scottie Thomaston
Supreme Court building
The Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday rejected pro-LGBT amendments to the “comprehensive” immigration reform bill, and as EqualityOnTrial noted yesterday, four Democrats also opposed inclusion of the amendments. Activists reacted with anger to the exclusion, with some suggesting they were shocked. The amendments were an attempt to protect members of binational same-sex couples from facing deportation, because the federal Defense of Marriage Act bars recognition of legal same-sex marriages and sponsorship of spouses relies on the definition imposed by DOMA.
The chairman of that committee, Senator Leahy (D-VT) had introduced two pro-LGBT amendments: one is the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), which would create the category of “permanent partner” in immigration laws as a way to reduce some of the effects of DOMA. The classification of permanent partner would have imposed most of the same requirements as marriages: the couple would have to be in a committed relationship, couldn’t be underage or blood relatives, and couldn’t be married or in a permanent partnership with anyone else. UAFA carves out an exception to DOMA: DOMA would remain the law until repealed or struck down by the Supreme Court, but same-sex binational couples could escape deportation.
The other amendment is a different type of workaround. It would add a section to the Immigration and Nationality Act providing that a marriage will be recognized as legal if it is legal where it was performed. This wouldn’t create any new categories, it would just ensure that the federal government relies on state law definitions for immigration purposes.
Neither amendment was included in the bill by the committee, but yesterday Greg Sargent reported in the Washington Post that Democratic aides are saying that the amendments may be reintroduced after the immigration bill reaches the floor of the Senate. The report suggests that the amendments may reappear in time to coincide with the Supreme Court’s eventual ruling in United States v. Windsor, Edith Windsor’s constitutional challenge to Section 3 of DOMA. If the Court strikes down the law, it would make UAFA mostly inoperable. But this Court is unpredictable on social issues and any decision could hinge on Justice Anthony Kennedy’s vote. At oral argument he seemed most convinced that Section 3 of DOMA violates federalism principles, but most of the moderates seemed to find an equal protection holding more appealing while the conservatives disagreed with both. If the Court leaves DOMA intact, it’s hard to see how Congress would repeal it any time soon. The House is majority Republican and the Senate usually proceeds on the assumption that 60 votes will be required due to obstruction.
Introducing the amendments right before the Court’s ruling could change the conversations over LGBT inclusion: if Section 3 of DOMA is struck down, the amendments would be seen as largely unnecessary, but if it’s upheld and the amendments aren’t included in the bill, same-sex binational couples will not get any relief from this immigration reform package. Interestingly, Sargent’s piece suggests that Democrats actually want to force the issue:
And so, if Dems wait until the DOMA decision comes down, they could find themselves without any real need to push the LGBT issue in the immigration reform debate. At the same time, though, this is a fight Democrats — and the White House – want to have, for substantive and political reasons. So they may introduce the amendments before the DOMA decision comes down — forcing a public battle with the GOP over gay rights.That would theoretically gin up the right wing base, forcing Republicans to rail against — and vote against — the simple act of extending a bill many of them support, i.e., immigration reform, to cover gay married couples, too. That would again reveal the GOP’s unwillingness to evolve on gay marriage along with the rest of the country, at a time when even some Republican officials and strategists are urging the party to develop a more tolerant and inclusive aura, something that is being made impossible by the refusal of most Republican voters to accept the inevitable.
[emphasis mine]
It’s a bigger challenge to get the amendments in the bill on the floor, of course. It will take 60 votes for the Senate to include the amendments on the floor, whereas if the committee had included it, Republican opponents would have needed 60 votes to strip the amendments on the floor. If there’s a serious push, it may happen, but if it’s just to “forc[e] a public battle with the GOP over gay rights[]” then inclusion of the amendments would ultimately be more about discussing the issue of LGBT inclusion and less about doing the work to include LGBT people. The Court’s ruling, expected by late June, may be a critical factor in Congress’ decision.
Leave a Comment May 23, 2013
Equality news round-up: Immigration reform, LGBT rights in Tennessee, and more
By Scottie Thomaston
Capitol Hill
- The biggest news of the week is yesterday’s action in the Senate Judiciary Committee, where most Democrats joined all Republicans to oppose inclusion of the Uniting American Families Act (UAFA), a compromise pro-LGBT bill that would have allowed binational married couples of the same sex to remain in the United States together, in the “comprehensive” immigration bill. Jacob covered it today, and linked to lots of commentary. Earlier this month, immigration attorney Lavi Soloway explained UAFA and the potential effects of an eventual repeal or court decision striking down DOMA. He pointed out that simply getting rid of DOMA would not fix the situation.
- Last we Towleroad profiled a same-sex binational couple. Lavi Soloway did as well.
- LGBT activists react angrily to the lack of LGBT inclusion in immigration.
- What’s next in the marriage fight?
- A poll in Tennessee shows that 62 per cent of people in the state think gays and lesbians and their partners should get health and other work-related benefits, and also shows that 49 per cent support some sort of relationship recognition for same-sex couples.
- Last week, President Obama gave a commencement address at Morehouse College that included pro-LGBT remarks. The video is here.
- Freedom to Work has filed a discrimination complaint against Exxon Mobil in Illinois.
Leave a Comment May 22, 2013
Former Justice John Paul Stevens, Professor Laurence Tribe give their Prop 8 and DOMA predictions
By Scottie Thomaston
Supreme Court building
As the end of the Supreme Court term and the release of its final opinions gets closer, more legal experts are weighing in with predictions and thoughts on which outcome in the marriage cases seems the most likely. As EqualityOnTrial has reported, there are lots of complicated options with different outcomes (ranging from good to relatively bad) and just looking at Hollingsworth v. Perry, the Prop 8 case, there’s no consensus on what will happen, though most people who have commented on the case believe the result will be narrow.
Two others recently offered their own thoughts and predictions: Laurence Tribe, who has done LGBT rights work before (most notably arguing before the Supreme Court in Bowers v. Hardwick, but also arguing National Gay Task Force v. Board of Education a year prior to Bowers) wrote commentary on the cases, while former Justice John Paul Stevens made his predictions while speaking at an event in Arlington.
Tribe, a Harvard Law professor, believes the decisions in both the Prop 8 and DOMA cases will be narrow, but he suggested that the result of the Court’s decisions would be that neither law will remain standing:
Regarding the pair of cases currently pending in the Supreme Court, my hunch – and it is only that – is that the Court will narrowly conclude that the DOMA [Defense of Marriage Act] issue is properly before SCOTUS on the merits notwithstanding the solid reasons to doubt that BLAG [Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group of the U.S. House of Representatives] is a proper representative of Congress and that the Court will hold DOMA’s Sec. 3 unconstitutional by a vote of 5-4, with Justice Kennedy relying heavily on the kinds of federalism considerations that Judge Boudin found persuasive in CA1 [U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit] but with the more liberal four justices relying squarely on the equality component of fifth amendment due process.As to Hollingsworth, however, I doubt that the Court will conclude that Chuck Cooper and the other private proponents of Prop 8, all lacking a fiduciary duty to California, have Art. III standing to defend it on the merits in the Supreme Court (despite what the state’s highest court concluded) and will dismiss that case on standing grounds, leaving in place Judge Walker’s statewide injunction against Prop 8 but setting no nationwide precedent. Alternatively, despite the Rule of Four, I wouldn’t be too surprised to see the Court dismiss cert as improvidently granted, leaving CA9’s [U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit] decision in place but again setting no nationwide precedent.
In other words, he suggests the Court will reach the merits in Edith Windsor’s DOMA case somehow ruling in favor of its jurisdiction to decide the case, and there will be five votes for striking down Section 3 of DOMA. It’s not clear whether he thinks there will be 5 votes for a holding on the reasoning for striking down the law: since he writes that four will vote based on equal protection with Justice Kennedy voting based on federalism, that would divide the rationale. But it’s worth nothing that the First Circuit’s opinion expressly denied that they were striking down the law based on federalism alone. Ultimately Judge Boudin’s opinion struck down the law based on equal protection, but he said explicitly that the federalism concerns presented by the law, whether or not they make the law unconstitutional under the Tenth Amendment, certainly make the law more suspect constitutionally. If Justice Kennedy adopts Boudin’s opinion then there would be five votes for an equal protection holding, even if he’s the only Justice who addresses the federalism concerns Boudin found only partially relevant.
He also writes that he believes it’s reasonable that government officials in California and in the federal government declined to defend these laws, and still enforced them. But his piece suggests that different accommodations should have been made to ensure adequate defense of the laws. He briefly writes that BLAG is probably not a party with Article III standing to defend the constitutionality of DOMA, but he doesn’t elaborate. There were arguments in some of the briefs that since BLAG is simply a “legal advisory group” for one body of Congress it lacks standing: they can’t claim to represent even the full House, and even less so the entire Congress, since the Senate did not authorize Congress’ involvement in the case. And though the BLAG is made up of five members who took a vote to decide to get involved in the case, only its three Republican members voted to get involved. The two Democratic members opposed involvement. This year the House rules added a rule suggesting that the BLAG can “continue” to represent the House, but there was no authorization by the full House before this year. So without knowing Tribe’s reasoning, the briefs in the case offered some evidence that the standing issue is questionable here.
He also answers Justice Scalia’s question at oral argument, when he asked “when” same-sex marriage bans “became” unconstitutional:
On the one question of just when a ban on same-sex marriage “became” unconstitutional, however, my answer would be that, from a rather formal perspective, it was unconstitutional from the moment the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified although, from a more evolutionary and thus realistic perspective, it is still in the process of becoming unconstitutional in the sense that the constitutional status of challenged action is a function of an evolving partly political/cultural and partly legal development rather than something akin to the “fact of the matter.” Asking when this kind of ban “became” unconstitutional is like asking when the ban on interracial marriage “became” unconstitutional: the answer might be said to be 1967, when Loving v. Virginia was decided, but it also might be said to be 1868, when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified. The question isn’t of the same metaphysical character as, e.g., the question of when the oceans of the earth were formed, or when the big bang occurred, or when George W. Bush became President of the United States.
Justice Stevens joined the Supreme Court as a moderate Republican, but when he retired, he was considered the Court’s most liberal member. He has agreed before that the issue of gay rights can be viewed as the civil rights issue of this era. And he hasn’t said whether marriage bans are unconstitutional but has noted the country’s movement on the issue. The report on Justice Steven’s comments doesn’t dwell on the things he said about the marriage cases, so there is not much to report, but his predictions were not far off from Tribe’s: This is similar to most predictions we’ve seen lately: narrow results but still the end of these anti-gay laws. Either way, based at least on the oral arguments, it appears the votes could be closer than expected.
1 Comment May 17, 2013
