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63 Emory L.J. Online 2001 (2013-2014)

handle is hein.journals/emyon63 and id is 1 raw text is: UNHINGING SAME-SEX MARRIAGE FROM THE CONSTITUTIONAL CANON: THE SEARCH FOR A PRINCIPLED DOCTRINAL FRAMEWORK Anthony Michael Kreis* INTRODUCTION When eighty-four-year-old Edie Windsor challenged the Defense of Marriage Act's constitutionality, she may not have predicted the case's historic importance. The Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA),' enacted in 1996, amended the federal Dictionary Act to define marriage and spouse to 2 exclude same-sex marriages in over 1,000 statutes and regulations. As a result, DOMA prohibited lawfully married same-sex couples from availing themselves of federal benefits provided by a wide swath of programs and policies covering Social Security, housing, taxation, copyright, and veterans' affairs.3 In United States v. Windsor, the United States Supreme Court held that the Defense of Marriage Act violated the equal protection guarantees incorporated in the Fifth Amendment.4 Writing for the Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy held upon careful consideration5 that DOMA had the avowed purpose and practical effect of imposing inequality on wedded same-sex couples.6 The statute's principal effect and principal purpose rendered the law * Emory University School of Law, Visiting Scholar-in-Residence; University of Georgia, Ph.D Candidate, School of Public and International Affairs; J.D., Washington & Lee University School of Law; B.A., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The author wishes to thank Professors Mary Dudziak, Martha Fineman, Timothy Holbrook, Michael Perry, and Sonja West for their comments on earlier drafts of this Essay and the Emory University School of Law faculty for a robust faculty roundtable on the Windsor decision that greatly improved the formulation of this piece. Defense of Marriage Act, Pub. L. No. 104-199, § 3(a), 110 Stat. 2419, 2419 (1996) (codified at 1 U.S.C. § 7 (2012)) (In determining the meaning of any Act of Congress, or of any ruling, regulation, or interpretation of the various administrative bureaus and agencies of the United States, the word 'marriage' means only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word 'spouse' refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.). 2 United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675, 2683 (2013). 3 Id. at 2694. 4 Id. at 2695. 5 Id. at 2692 (quoting Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 633 (1996)). 6 Id. at 2693.

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