Pelosi calls on Boehner to drop DOMA defense.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi

As expected, House Speaker John "Snooki" Boehner has announced today that congressional leaders are filing an appeal to Wednesday's ruling in Golinski vs. The Office of Personnel Management that portions of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) are unconstitutional. The ruling said, in part, “The court finds that DOMA, as applied to Ms. Golinski, violates her right to equal protection of the law.”

The suite was filed by Karen Golinski when her employer, the Ninth Circuit Court, denied her spousal insurance benefits. The appeal now puts this case before the Ninth Circuit, which, coincidentally, ruled last week that California's Proposition 8 is also unconstitutional.

The appeal is being filed by the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG), which was formed last year to defend DOMA in court after the Obama administration announced that it would no longer defend the Clinton-era law and believes that it violates the U.S. Constitution. 

In response to Boehner's actions, Minorty Leader and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released to following statement: 

“In rejecting the arguments of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group, the court’s ruling also reaffirmed a core belief of the majority of House Democrats: that the House is not united in this case; that the BLAG lawyers do not speak for Congress; and that BLAG’s intervention remains a waste of taxpayer resources.”

This should be interesting.

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