Ruth Bader Ginsburg Says Supreme Court Will Tackle DOMA Soon
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, toughest Supreme Court Judge around, gave a cheeky answer to a Colorado student on Wednesday night and predicted she'll be deciding on the Defense of Marriage Act sooner rather than later.
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During a routine question-and-answer session, a student asked whether the Supreme court would consider applying equal-protection clause to sexual orientation, effectively making D.O.M.A. and any other gay marriage ban illegal. Ginsburg deferred from answering:
Ginsburg said with a smile that she couldn't answer the question. She said she could not talk about matters that would come to the court, and that the Defense of Marriage Act would probably be up soon.
"I think it's most likely that we will have that issue before the court toward the end of the current term," she said.
The first rule of Supreme Court club is we don't talk about Supreme Court club.
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Most recently, a federal judge in New York declared DOMA unconstitutional, and a Federal Appeals court in Massachusetts ruled the 1996 bill unconstitutional, too. The Department of Justice made moves in July to get DOMA in front of the Supreme Court, and at the time they predicted the earliest they would see the bill would be in September. That hasn't happened yet, obviously, but all signs are pointing towards DOMA being the hottest Supreme Court decision of next year's Spring/Summer season.
