The wave of decisions following the Supreme Court's decision in Windsor has begun. A federal judge in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) ruled in Cozen O'Connor v. Tobits that under federal ERISA law, the same-sex spouse of a deceased law partner is entitled to receive her pension. The lawyer's parents do not have a claim to her pension. This is the first case of which I am aware that has followed Windsor in recognizing a same-sex marriage for the purpose of federal benefits.
--Full disclosure, I formerly practiced law at Cozen O'Connor
In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor, a Pennsylvania federal judge has ruled the wife, and not the parents, of a deceased female Cozen O’Connor partner is entitled to her profit-sharing benefits.
Judge Darnell Jones, III just ruled that under federal ERISA (Employee Retirement plan) law,
same-sex marriages will be recognized. (Link is to the Philadelphia Legal Intelligencer -- free registration may be required to view the article) Judge Jones kept his decision to federal law and did not venture into Pennsylvania law, which defines marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman.
Prior to the court’s decision in Windsor, under the plain language of ERISA, the [Internal Revenue] Code and the plan at issue in this case, qualified retirement plans were under no obligation to provide benefits to same-sex spouses. Following the court’s ruling, the term ‘spouse’ is no longer unconstitutionally restricted to members of the opposite sex, but now rightfully includes those same-sex spouses in ‘otherwise valid marriages.'
This has been a long time coming. I have to go back to 1998 when I was in law school to the time when I first thought about marriage equality. At that time, military recruitment was the primary gay rights issue facing many law schools. Most had policies that excluded entities that discriminated against homosexuals from recruiting on campus. Uncle Sam (don't ask, don't tell) took umbrage to those schools and threatened to pull federal funding unless military recruiters were allowed access to campus facilities. Some schools tried to work around it by renting conference rooms off campus specifically for the military, but that wasn't good enough. At about the same time, a close friend from college (who is a brilliant astro-physicist at the University of Wisconsin) came out of the closet. So that was the environment in which I first thought seriously about marriage equality.
I took a course on Law and Sexuality (yes, there is such a thing), which was an advanced constitutional law course that focused on issues of privacy in personal relations. Some of the key cases were Griswold v. Connecticut, Loving v. Virginia, Roe v. Wade and its progeny and also Bowers v. Hardwick. I wrote a paper for that class that deconstructed every significant argument that the opponents of same-sex marriage raised. The foremost legal scholar (most backward?) opposing same-sex marriage was Lynn Wardle out of Brigham Young Law School. I took a law review article he had authored and tore it apart, piece by piece. I would like to say my arguments were brilliant, but that was for my professor to decide (I got an A). Alas, my paper was lost three computer crashes ago, so I can't share that wisdom with you.
Nevertheless, it was my opinion then, as it is now, that denying the rights of gays and lesbians to marry the persons whom they love is an act of rampant discrimination. 15 years later, those walls are crumbling, and I couldn't be happier. Sometimes it takes a long time, but the law eventually gets it right.