A California federal bankruptcy court has declared the federal
Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional insofar as it would preclude a same-sex married couple from filing a joint bankruptcy petition under Chapter 13 of the Bankruptcy Code.
11 USC 302 permits joint petitions by a debtor and the debtor's spouse. The couple involved in the case was one of 18,000 same-sex couples legally married in California before the passage of Proposition 8. In
In re Balas and Morales, (CD CA, June 13, 2011), the court held that DOMA violates the couple's equal protection rights afforded by the 5th Amendment, whether the court applies heightened scrutiny or rational basis review. The court explained:
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.
This court cannot conclude from the evidence or the record in this case that any valid governmental interest is advanced by DOMA as applied to the Debtors. Debtors have urged that recent governmental defenses of the statute assert that DOMA also serves such interests as “preserving the status quo,” “eliminating inconsistencies and easing administrative burdens” of the government. None of these post hoc defenses of DOMA withstands heightened scrutiny..... In the court’s final analysis, the government’s only basis for supporting DOMA comes down to an apparent belief that the moral views of the majority may properly be enacted as the law of the land in regard to state-sanctioned same-sex marriage in disregard of the personal status and living conditions of a significant segment of our pluralistic society. Such a view is not consistent with the evidence or the law....
In an unusual move, all 20 judges of the bankruptcy court signed the opinion in the case.
Wall Street Journal reports on the decision.
