Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has a habit of being ahead of the curve. She's successfully investigated predatory mortgage lenders, reaping large settlements from banks like Goldman Sachs to help borrowers in danger of foreclosure. Now the National Law Journal reports that her office is making waves again: Coakley filed a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of a federal law defining marriage as a union between one man and one woman, which denies same-sex couples married in Massachusetts access to certain federal benefits.Coakley filed the July 8 lawsuit, Commonwealth of Massachusetts v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in the U.S. Court for the District of Massachusetts against the Health and Human Services agency, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs and those agencies' secretaries.The lawsuit claims that Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) violates the U.S. Constitution because it interferes with Massachusetts' "sovereign authority to define and regulate marriage."The suit also claims that DOMA violates the Constitution's spending clause, which restricts Congress' power to impose conditions on states getting federal funding. According to a Coakley office statement, "Congress does not have a valid reason for requiring Massachusetts to treat married same-sex couples differently from all other married couples."Exciting stuff. In the most recent challenge to DOMA, the Obama administration earned the justified anger of the LGBT community and its allies when the Department of Justice filed a brief in defense of the law, which the president promised to repeal during his campaign last year. Though Obama himself and other administration officials have sought rapprochement with the LGTB community, gestures aren't going to be enough when a case like this presents an opportunity to overturn the law -- watch to see how the administration decides to deal with this case and how strong a stance DOJ lawyers take defending the anti-gay marriage statute.
-- Tim Fernholz
