Equality On Trial

I’ve been remiss in keeping up with the court cases, so I’m covering a number of the cases in one post to bring them up to date. Here’s the first installment, a second to follow. I’ve lost track of what I’ve posted, so apologies if any of the following is a duplicate.

Windsor v. USA
Both BLAG and DOJ have filed notices of appeal.  The BLAG appeal has been docketed at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals as case number 12-2335; the DOJ appeal is case number 12-2435.  I expect the parties to request that these two cases get consolidated for briefing and scheduling purposes.

The DOJ appeal only just showed up in the Court’s online dockets today and the only filings so far have been routine procedural items.  As far as I can tell, no briefing schedule has been set yet.

In the BLAG appeal, Plaintiff filed a motion on June 11 requesting an expedited appeal schedule. On June 13 she filed a replacement motion correcting a typo in the original. BLAG indicated its intent to respond to the motion. Today, BLAG filed a request to set August 10, 2012, as the deadline for its opening brief. It’s not clear to me if that is the response to the motion, or if another, more detailed, response will be filed. If the latter, I’ll post it when filed.

Golinski v. OPM
As has been reported previously, BLAG submitted its opening brief.  Then, on June 11, a number of amicus briefs in support of BLAG (i.e., to reverse the district court decision) were filed.  Plaintiff’s and the DOJ’s briefs are due July 3 and amicus briefs in support Plaintiff will be due one week later.

McLaughlin v. Panetta
Per the DOJ’s request and over Plaintiffs’ objection, the case is stayed until 30 days after the 1st Circuit issues its mandate in the Massachusetts DOMA cases (Gill v. OPM and Mass v. DHHS).  You may recall that the 1st Circuit has stayed the issuance of the mandate in those cases in anticipation of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  This leaves the McLaughlin case in a long-term holding pattern.

Cooper-Harris v. USA
BLAG has moved to stay the case until the 9th Circuit rules on the appeals in Golinski.  Yesterday, Plaintiff filed her objection to the stay. BLAG’s reply in support of the motion is due June 25 and a hearing on the motion is set for July 23 in Los Angeles.

Pedersen v. OPM
Nothing new – still awaiting a decision.

We’re anticipating appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court in Perry v. Brown and the Massachusetts DOMA cases, but none have been filed to date.

There are four other cases I’ve been watching: Blesch v. Holder, Sevcik v. Sandoval, Dragovich v. U.S. Dep’t  Treasury and LCR v. USA (proceedings on attorney’s fees).   I’ll update those in Part 2  — later today, time allowing.