As federal agencies continue to roll out their rules for allowing federal benefits for lawfully married same-sex couples, the reach of the Supreme Court's wise ruling in June striking down part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act has come into sharper focus.
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Under new rules announced on Thursday by the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service, all same-sex couples who are legally married will be treated the same as opposite-sex married couples for federal tax purposes — even if they live in a state that doesn't recognize their union.
Generally, the I.R.S. has followed a "place of residence" standard for determining eligibility for spousal benefits. But adopting a standard based on the place where the marriage was performed rather than the couple's home state fulfills the goals of national uniformity and equality, and there was no statutory impediment to doing so.
Beginning with the 2013 tax year, same-sex spouses will be required to file federal returns together as "married filing jointly" or individually as "married filing separately." The rule is retroactive, giving them the option of filing refund claims for tax years 2010, 2011 and 2012.
Other federal agencies have announced similar moves to comply with the Defense of Marriage Act ruling, allowing benefits for same-sex spouses of active military personnel and federal workers, for example. Separately on Thursday, the Department of Health and Human Services said Medicare would extend a nursing home benefit to same-sex spouses.
A federal judge in California on Friday ruled that the military cannot deny spousal benefits to a lesbian veteran in a same-sex marriage. The federal law governing veterans' benefits limits benefits to marriages between a man and a woman — wording that is nearly identical to the Defense of Marriage Act provision that the Supreme Court struck down as unconstitutional. The ruling is right, and the Obama administration should not appeal it.
The I.R.S. change is the broadest to come out of the landmark court ruling, affecting virtually every married same-sex couple in the United States. The move to recognize all same-sex couples' marriages will reduce the harm to those who get married in one of the states where same-sex marriage is legal but reside in a state that does not recognize their unions. It also makes state bans on same-sex marriage look even more discriminatory.
In New Jersey, there could be big repercussions, potentially helping to end the state's unjust law allowing civil unions but not same-sex marriages. It has long been clear that New Jersey civil unions are not equal to marriage and violate the state constitutional mandate established by the New Jersey Supreme Court in a 2006 decision, which said "committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples."
In a civil rights lawsuit argued in mid-August in New Jersey state court, plaintiffs asked for a declaration ending the state's exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage. Now that same-sex married couples are eligible for federal benefits under rules that don't apply to civil unions, New Jersey's insistence that civil unions are equivalent to marriage is plainly wrong.
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