Holder Orders Equal Treatment for Same-Sex Married Couples
Attorney General Eric Holder announced yesterday that the U.S. government will recognize same-sex marriages as equal to heterosexual marriages in all federal matters, including in U.S. courts, bankruptcies, prison visits and other areas, such as survivor benefits.
The expansion of such federal recognition will include 34 states where same-sex marriage isn’t legal, but only where the federal government has jurisdiction. For example, a same-sex couple legally married in California can now have their federal bankruptcy proceeding recognized in Mississippi, even though Mississippi has amended it’s state constitution to ban same-sex unions.
Same-sex couples will be afforded the right to decline to give testimony in court that might incriminate a spouse and will be subject to domestic support obligations such as alimony debts. Same-sex couples will also be entitled to visitation and correspondence rights with spouses in federal prisons.
This also means that the government won’t contest same-sex married couples their rights in states where previously prosecutors could argue that the marriage is not recognized in the state where the couple lives.
Holder, who has made civil rights a priority for the Justice Department, said that as important as the right against racial discrimination has been, “my commitment to confronting discrimination based on sexual orientation runs just as deep.”
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