US DoJ Will Support Marriage Equality at SCOTUS

[Content Note: Homophobia.]

As multiple states are challenging rulings legalizing same-sex marriage, and Utah has announced its intention to take their case to the United States Supreme Court, US Attorney General Eric Holder says that the Department of Justice "is ready to intervene on behalf of marriage equality" if SCOTUS agrees to hear a case on the matter.

Holder made the statement in an interview broadcast [Sunday] on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos. ...If the high court hears [Utah's] or a similar case from any other state, the Justice Department will file a brief with the court that "will be in support of same-sex marriage," Holder said in the interview with ABC News' Pierre Thomas. It would be "consistent with the actions that we have taken over the past couple of years," Holder added, such as refusing to defend the federal Defense of Marriage Act, a key portion of which was invalidated by the Supreme Court last year.

However, in that decision, when the court ruled that DOMA's ban on federal government recognition of same-sex marriages violates the U.S. Constitution, it did not say whether marriage is actually a constitutional right. And when the high court heard the case involving California's Proposition 8, the question before it was whether the measure's proponents had legal standing to defend it in court; in ruling that they did not, the Supreme Court let lower court rulings against Prop. 8 stand, but still did not establish a constitutional right to marriage.

Holder said he believes marriage is a constitutional right, and he thinks the Supreme Court will agree when it considers cases on state-level bans of same-sex unions. "I think a lot of these measures that ultimately will come before the court will not survive a heightened scrutiny examination," he said.

Right on.