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Subscribe to RSSWASHINGTON -- More than 200 businesses on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike down a federal law that restricts the definition of marriage to heterosexual unions, in one of corporate America's most prominent efforts to support same-sex marriage.
The companies signed on to a friend-of-the-court brief in Windsor v. United States, a high-profile case challenging the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). They ranged from technology giants Microsoft Corp and Google Inc to Wall Street financiers such as Citigroup Inc and Goldman Sachs Group Inc to vineyards and yogurt makers in California.
Thomson Reuters Corp, which owns the Reuters news agency, also supported the submission.
The companies want the Supreme Court to void a key provision in the federal law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman. They largely stayed away from constitutional arguments attacking the law and instead focused on the business nuisance the law created.
DOMA forces employers to treat employees with same-sex spouses differently from those with opposite-sex partners, the companies said, depriving gay employees of certain healthcare and retirement benefits that may be on offer. The law also creates headaches for human resources officials, they said.
"HR departments would tell you it is a disaster trying to deal with DOMA when you are a large employer, because you have these employees who are legally married, but now you've got to put them in a different box for W-2s, for ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act), for retirement benefits, and it's really vexing," said Sabin Willett in an interview. Willett wrote the brief for his law firm, Bingham McCutchen, which handled the matter pro bono.
Separately, lawyers representing another group of employers, including some of the same companies, said they planned to file a brief on Thursday in a related case that questions a California law, known as Proposition 8, banning gay marriage.
The two cases are to be argued before the Supreme Court on March 26 and 27. A decision is expected by the end of June.
While corporate America has long offered domestic partnership benefits and made efforts to attract gay employees, the filing seemed to represent a new step in an effort to promote the issue.
"It is old news that big business is friendly to lesbian and gay unions," said Yale law professor William Eskridge, who has argued on behalf of gay rights. "But there has never been a business brief quite like this one with so many signatories on such a landmark issue," he said.
A group of prominent Republicans, including former advisers to President George W. Bush, are also expected to file a brief challenging the California law, adding heft to backers of gay rights.
The arguments appeared directed at Justice Anthony Kennedy, as a moderate and potential swing vote, to show the kind of wide support that exists, Eskridge said.
'HURTING BUSINESS'
The brief grew out of a previous effort to represent business interests in another case challenging the DOMA law, according to Willett.
That case brought together some 70 companies that felt courts may not have understood the full business impact of the law.
"When people talk about DOMA, they usually, and rightly so, focus on its impact upon human beings ... but people may not realize, and courts may not realize, this thing is hurting business, too," Willett said.
In the brief filed on Wednesday, the companies argued that DOMA "requires that employers treat one employee differently from another, when each is married, and each marriage is equally lawful."
DOMA does not create any uniformity nationwide, they said, because 12 states either authorize same-sex marriage or recognize marriages that have been performed in other states.
That creates a burden for employers, particularly those who do business nationally, they added.
The law also forces companies to discriminate, sometimes in contravention of their own internal policies and local laws, when dealing with healthcare plans and other benefits, the companies said.
In briefs already filed in support of restricting marriage to heterosexual unions, business interests have not been represented. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has not taken a stand on the issue.
Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.
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Top corporations backing gay marriage. More republican heads are exploding today like yesterday! Please can someone come and clean this mess up.
seems to me there's more and more support for equal rights for homosexuals :)
For 4 years democrats have been telling us how evil any profit driven business is, so is that a reflection on gays now?
Uh oh, what a conundrum.
Thank You Amazon-I'm so glad you support EQUAL RIGHTS because it would make me very sad if I had to quit doing business with you...................
equality is a fantasy.... legislated equality is even worse...... and amazon, at least for the moment, will only have an equal share of customers because i will not do business with them any longer.... business should butt out
How are you accessing the internet right now? FYI, the vast majority of high tech companies support marriage equality, including Apple, IBM, Verizon, etc. The computer itself was invented by a gay dude. You should log off right now and never use a computer again.
Bigots like you are not just in the minority, you're a dying demographic.
Phag comments are so stupid. Definitely shows how moronic you queers are. The best part is you'll never have a full life being gay. Ha ha ha!!!!
The government should just get out of the marriage business all together. The states should only be allowed to give co-habitation contracts to anyone, gay or straight. but NOOoooooo, they want that licence fee. which is what started the whole problem. The church is the only entity that should have any document with the word marriage on it. And by church i mean, church, temple etc. etc. If the supreme court would just rule in favor of separation of church and state, then all gay people would have equal rights. There would be no argument left.
And to those who make negative comments about gay being a sin. If it is a sin, then GOD and Only God has a right to judge.
And to DadInAZ: Try to stay out of adult conversations, you are not qualified. You or I, have no Idea what kind of life a gay person lives. And have no basis to judge the quality of their lives. Just for fyi, Gay people have the lowest crime rate, the highest education rate, and judging by the ones I have met in my 61 years of life, they are the nicest people one can hope to meet. So what the heck is your problem?
Churches are involved in "holy matrimony", not marriage. Just ask a divorced and remarried Catholic to explain the difference to you......and ask him how he was able to get remarried since his church doesn't recognize divorce or remarriage.
And since marriage is a legal contract concerning property and kinship rights, the government will continue to be involved. Let's put it this way - do you really want your local priest deciding the property division during a divorce, or deciding whether a child can marry a pedophile?
It is not the Supreme Court's place to be for or against gay marriage, only to decide if a law passed by congress is Constitutional or not.
Yea supposedly. But how do you explain that so many of their decisions and votes reflect their personal politics?
If Congress didn't have their heads up their butts they would overturn it on their own. That said, i would rather see the SCOTUS overturn it - preventing osme newly elected right-wing nut jobs from reinstating it later.
True, but so far every single federal court which has considered DOMA has found it unconstitutional. Striking down DOMA will be an easy decision for SCOTUS.
Since corporations are people, according to the Court, they should have a voice on this issue.
So 200 voices out of 310mil? Would you like to rethink that genius thought?
It makes no sense for business to support this - it only increases costs!
It gives them a competitive advantage in recruiting employees. And some businesses are run by real human beings with compassion for their fellow man. Many Republicans of the christian persuasion should take note.
DOMA places job-killing regulations on corporations.
If an employer wants to retain LGBT talent, they need to offer benefits. When a company offers these benefits, the company has to set up different rules and processes regarding the taxation of these benefits.
Actually it'll reduce costs since ethical companies will no longer have to offset the extra federal taxes gay couples are currently paying. It'll also reduce accounting costs, and improve the recruiting environment.
The corporations are favoring this solely from a financial prospective. Different laws in different States add to their accounting practices thus addiding to their costs. Personally I am in favor of the DOMA as there is no discrimination involved. Any person is free to marry any other person of the opposite sex. If males are allowed to marry males and females females why should not every other group also be represented why not allow multiple wives. Why must migonomy be the rules we abide be. Why not allow brothers to marry sisters if that is their choice. Where do you expect all this to end.
You may want to ask Larry Craig's wife how things work out when a gay man marries a woman.
I doubt if she will answer, but I'm sure that former NJ Gov McNeary's ex-wife will be more than glad to share her opinion.
Perhaps you can explain to Edie Windsor how equal she was after paying $363,053 in inheritance tax after her wife died.
The racists of Virginia tried the same bigot-logic 50 years ago, but the court easily saw that odious bigotry masking as equality.
You bigots are about to lose again.
Wyoming, that's been my view all along. Why stop there? The Mormons originally believed in multiple wives. The Muslims do as well. I don't know what other faiths or societies do, but I'm sure there are some.
And when the feminists start screaming about equality, there will be wives with multiple husbands.
Where do we draw the line?
No surprise that you bigots made the exact same argument against mixed-race marriage.
No wonder you're on such a losing streak in court - no judge is buying your erroneous slippery-slope arguments.
I know of a dear friend that first filed a claim in 2002....after years of losing paperwork, chasing records (had to go to DC in person to get them) the VA finally approved his disability in Oct 2011. Here it is March 2013 and the VA has been making excuse after excuse why the paperwork for him to sign for backpay has been delayed again,,one excuse is that it was lost in the mail. VA wants this disabiled vet to die before giving him any money. I really believe it!!!
A few years back while I was job hunting I was surprised to learn that ConAgra offers benefits to same-sex couples, despite being based in the very conservative city of Omaha, Nebraska.
It seems to me that repealing DOMA will make it easier for businesses join the trend of broadening benefit eligibility so they can attract the best talent possible.
I think something like 60% of Fortune 500 and 85% of the Fortune 100 companies now offer offsets for the extra taxes resulting from DOMA, or have more general same-sex couple benefits.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/lgbt/news/2012/09/12/37640/more-companies-recognize-the-benefits-of-workplace-equality/
It is so sad that our law makers and justices of the supreme court feel compelled to violate their respective oaths of office and work against the constitution. The definition of marriage is a union between a man and a woman. How difficult is that to grasp? No one cares if homosexuals and lesbians have a union and means to void that union, that provide opportunities to receive government benefits. Let them call it what they will, but not "Marriage".
Sorry Mel, but the constitution doesn't mention marriage at all - not for straights, not for gays.
It does however have that pesky 14th Amendment guarantee of equal protection, which is why you bigots are on a losing streak in the courts. You've literally lost every single DOMA and Prop h8 case so far. You can expect to lose big time when the court rules in June.
are you kidding skrekk? you need to back up and look at case law leading up to this. and if you think justice scalia is going to let you sodomize your pals on main st...think again.
If corporations want to back gay marriages, then go ahead. They will see their business go down just like JC Penney. I will bet their shareholders won't be happy with their decision either. Queers need to go away for good.
So far every company which has endorsed marriage equality has benefited. All of your homophobic boycotts have failed, regardless of whether your target has been Penney's, Target or Starbucks.
As George Will recently noted, you bigots are literally a dying breed. And the companies know it. Why would they want to try to appeal to elderly bigots when they can run an ad campaign to appeal to a younger and far more enlightened demographic which actually spends money?
Moreover, the majority of the public supports marriage equality. People like you are now a shrinking minority.
Since when did corporations have the "right" to address the court as one entity? It reeks of fascism. Then again, what else is new when talking about queer marriage?