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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Says Supreme Court To Address DOMA This Session

Speaking yesterday at a conference at the University of Colorado, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said she believed the Supreme Court would address the Defense of Marriage Act when they reconvene for the fall.

The subject arose when a student asked whether or not the Constitution’s equal-protections clause applied to sexual orientation. Ginsburg smiled and said she couldn’t answer that because, “it’s most likely that we will have that issue before the court toward the end of the current term.”

Passed in 1996, the law banning federal recognition of same-sex marriages has been declared unconstitutional in several federal cases now potentially before the justicesHollingsworth v. Perry, A Prop 8 test case, could get the nod, as could Brewer v. Diaz, which addresses whether same-sex spouses of state employees can be denied benefits.

Ginsburg, 79, was at the event to encourage women to enter the legal profession. She spoke humorously of the scarcity of women’s bathrooms at Columbia University in the 1950s, when she was there studying law: “We never complained. That’s just the way it was.”

No disrespect, Justice Ginsburg, but we’re complaining. This is not just the way it is.

Source: AP, Photo: Steve Petteway

 

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