Pennsylvania’s “mini-DOMA” has the same discriminatory purpose and effect as the federal Defense of Marriage Act on which it was based, plaintiffs in one of the challenges to the state’s ban on same-sex marriage argued in their opposition to the Corbett administration’s objections to their suit.
The state’s law restricting the definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman should be struck for the same reason the U.S. Supreme Court struck it from the federal law, lawyers in the case, led by Robert Heim of Dechert, argued in Ballen v. Corbett. The case, brought by same-sex couples who were granted marriage licenses by a Montgomery County clerk before he was ordered to stop last summer, is in the Commonwealth Court. The administration is represented by lawyers from Lamb McErlane, as it is in the other challenges to the state’s marriage law.
