Ruling rejects U.S. marriage law

Issue of same-sex marriage likely heading for U.S. Supreme Court.

A battle over a federal BOSTON — law that defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman appears headed for the Supreme Court after an appeals court ruled Thursday that denying benefits to married gay couples is unconstitutional.

In a unanimous decision, the three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston said the 1996 law deprives gay couples of the rights and privileges granted to heterosexual couples.

The court didn’t rule on the law’s more politically combustible provision — that states without same-sex marriage cannot be forced to recognize gay unions performed in states where it’s legal. It also wasn’t asked to address whether gay couples have a constitutional right to marry.

The ruling is a victory for gay rights advocates and the Obama administration, which had refused to defend this part of the 1996 law.

The law was passed at a time when it appeared Hawaii would legalize gay marriage. Since then, many states have instituted their own bans on gay marriage, while eight states have approved the practice, led by Massachusetts in 2004.

The court, the first federal appeals panel to rule against the benefits section of the law, agreed with a lower court judge who in 2010 concluded that the law interferes with the right of a state to define marriage and denies married gay couples federal benefits given to heterosexual married couples, including the ability to file joint tax returns. The ruling came in two lawsuits, one filed by the Boston-based legal group Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders and the other by state Attorney General Martha Coakley.

“For me, it’s more just about having equality and not having a system of first- and second-class marriages,” said plaintiff Jonathan Knight, a financial associate at Harvard Medical School who married Marlin Nabors in 2006.

“I think we can do better, as a country, than that,” said Knight, a plaintiff.

Opponents of gay marriage blasted the decision.

“This ruling that a state can mandate to the federal government the definition of marriage for the sake of receiving federal benefits, we find really bizarre, rather arrogant,” said Kris Mineau, president of the Massachusetts Family Institute.