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THE NEWS CONFERENCE: AG Coakley introduces Jonathan Miller, Civil Rights AAG, and Maura Healey, Civil Rights Section Chief, who are with her.

Coakley begins by saying that the words of John Adams, in Massachusetts’ constitution, were determined in 2004 to mean that marriage must be available to all couples regardless of sexual orientation. After five years of living that experience, today, Massachusetts filed a lawsuit in federal District Court challenging Section 3 of DOMA.

Coakley gave three reasons for the suit:

DOMA created a federal definition of marriage, directly interfering with Massachusetts’ longstanding soverign authority to determine who it determines are “married” under federal law.
DOMA is a discriminatory law.
DOMA places Mass. in the position of choosing whether to adapt its programs to fit federal law, but if it does so, it limits the ability of Mass. residents to have full equality under Mass. programs.
Section 2, the Full Faith and Credit portion of DOMA, is not challenged.

Among the commonwealth-specific harms Coakley cited are:

The commonwealth is affected when it provides health benefits because same-sex couples who choose to receive them are tax on those partners’ benefits, which “frankly creates a paperwork nightmare.” She referred repeatedly to the “two-tiered” system the state had to create after 2004 as a result of DOMA.
DOMA requires that Mass treats individuals differently under public medical benefits like Medicaid and Medicare.

Mass. cannot inter the same-sex spouses of military veterans in federal military burial locations.
The lawsuit, per Coakley, is seeking an injunction against the federal government prohibiting it from applying DOMA to Massachusetts.

DOMA also violates the Spending Clause, the suit alleges. One clear limitation is that Congress cannot compel the states to violate its states’ citizens state constitutional rights. This is interesting because it is something that is far more effectively raised by a state than any private party.

Asked about the GLAD Gill lawsuit, Coakley said that the state’s lawsuit is brought on behalf of all citizens, so it is in that sense broader. “They [the GLAD suit's lawyers] bring similar and related issues as to the impact” of DOMA.

Consolidation with the Gill suit is a possibility they have considered, as she said judges “often put together” cases containing similar issues.

As to why now and why Massachusetts, Coakley noted, “We now have a record of five years” of implementing marriage equality and seeing the development of the “two-tiered” system.