Today is oral argument in Windsor v. United States, challenging the Defense of Marriage Act.
We have not followed the DOMA litigation very carefully to date.
We did cover the secondary boycott effort directed at the King & Spalding law firm. There was a truly abysmal threat to picket and boycott clients of the firm that had nothing to do with the DOMA litigation as a means of forcing the firm to give up representation of the House of Representatives after the Department of Justice abruptly changed positions on the constitutionality of the law.
Regardless of how one feels about gay marriage or DOMA, the King & Spalding secondary boycott was a low mark. The law firm also represented GITMO detainees, so imagine the media and legal profession outcry if there were a secondary boycott organized against the firm as a means of forcing it to drop that representation.
The King & Spalding secondary boycott was another step towards total political war, where even people who have no involvement in an issue are used as pawns and pressure points.
As mentioned, we haven’t followed the merits of the DOMA litigation much, so I’ll have to defer to others. SCOTUSblog has a good summary (also here). There are federalism issues about the role of the federal government in an issue traditionally left to the states, which has blurred the usual right-left divide. There also is an issue of who has standing to defend the statute (also here) now that the DOJ refuses to do to.
Argument starts just after 10 a.m.
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Update: Argument recap: DOMA is in trouble.
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