So this is fun. The House GOP has maxed out on its spending cap in defense of DOMA. (Since that report, they suffered another defeat in a court of appeals and that case is headed to the Supreme Court.)
Since they are lacking in funds to support their (thus far unanimously unsuccessful) endeavors, they have started appealing to judges for requests to either stay or postpone cases or, in the latest instance, to appear in a hearing via telephone. That's what they did in Cooper-Harris v. USA, a case based in federal court in California.
Expressing a desire “[t]o conserve litigation resources”, they attempted to persuade Judge Consuelo Marshall to allow them to confer via telephone. (It was an unopposed request.)
The judge said no. The order comes without comment, just a stamped "DENIED" across the top of the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group's (BLAG, the House Republicans defending Section 3 of DOMA) proposed order.
Apparently, BLAG will be required to spend their resources to travel across the country in order to continue defending a law for which they have yet to provide a successful defense.
This is notably the case in which a military servicemember was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and the VA decided that it was likely as a result of her service. She is now seeking spousal benefits through a ruling that Section 3 of DOMA is unconstitutional after the VA denied the benefits she requested for her spouse. She would be allowed those benefits were she married to a man. The hearing was recently rescheduled to the 14th.
An earlier version of this said that she was herself denied spousal benefits, but she requested them for her wife