The Republican-controlled House of Representatives narrowly averted a government shutdown a couple weeks ago, while haggling over cuts to the federal budget and complaining that there weren't more. Yet this week, House leaders agreed to pay up to $500,000 – and up to $520 per hour in attorney time – to hire an outside law firm to defend the indefensible Defense of Marriage Act. House Speaker John Boehner and the rest of his leadership team won't get to work on any sort of workable jobs bill for the American people, and are unlikely to schedule a vote on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which would help LGBT people keep their jobs in states that currently offer no protections on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. Yet last week, they found the time to sign a contract with King and Spalding, and firm partner Paul Clement, who just happens to be the former solicitor general who worked for President George W. Bush.
Ironically, while the team of lawyers leading the charge to defend DOMA includes three former Bush administration attorneys, the firm itself takes pride in its diversity and in hiring top LGBT talent. We have to wonder if gay law students will have second thoughts when approached by a recruiter from King and Spalding, and we hope those students research the firm's cases. The House decided to defend DOMA after the Obama administration announced that it would no longer defend the law in several court cases. As the Human Rights Campaign notes on its website, had that decision not been made, the department would have had to argue in its briefs that gays and lesbians have not been subject to a history of discrimination and that sexual orientation is relevant to a person's ability to contribute to society.
"The attorney general concluded that he could not make those arguments, that courts should apply heightened scrutiny to laws (like Section 3 of DOMA) that discriminate based on sexual orientation, and that there was no defense of the law that could survive that more rigorous review," HRC stated.
DOMA is a horrible law, and one that negatively affects same-sex couples. It's the reason same-sex couples had the agonizing task of filing their federal taxes this year as if they were married (splitting income as community property) but could not take advantage of filing jointly – if that would have been a better option for them. It's the reason federal employees cannot add their same-sex spouse to their health insurance. It's one of the reasons a gay foreign-born spouse cannot gain residency status but those in a heterosexual marriage can. And on and on it goes. The federal government's General Accounting Office did a study of existing law and enumerated more than 1,100 rights and privileges available to heterosexual married couples that are not available to same-sex couples.
House Republicans should be ashamed of themselves for wasting taxpayer money to defend a law that discriminates against LGBT Americans. The money spent defending DOMA is a drop in the bucket for the federal budget but could have paid for job training, unemployment benefits, help for seniors, or numerous other programs. We thought the GOP's mantra is avoid "wasteful spending."
Boehner apparently didn't get the memo.