A national gay rights advocacy group is calling on U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to grant federal marriage benefits to more than 500 Wisconsin same-sex couples who got married between June 6 and June 13.
During that week, a federal court ruling struck down the state’s gay marriage ban, allowing those couples to be married before the same judge put a stay on the ruling pending an appeal.
The request from the Human Rights Campaign comes just a week after Democrats in Wisconsin’s Congressional Delegation sent a similar letter.
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Holder has already granted federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples in Utah and Michigan who got married during a similar legal window. Human Rights Campaign spokesman Fred Sainz says action from Holder would recognize those marriages as legal under 1,300 different federal statutes.
“Everything from being able to file your taxes jointly, to having marital privilege in case of criminal prosecution,” said Sainz. “These rights, benefits, and obligations are kind of the embodiment of people’s lives together within the institution of civil marriage.”
Meanwhile lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union are urging Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen to move quickly to either abandon defense of the marriage ban or file the appeal he has promised. Larry Dupuis said doing so would resolve the legal limbo the same-sex couples face in getting state marriage benefits.
“If they’re actually considering whether to abandon what looks like an increasingly doomed effort to stop equality from coming to Wisconsin, I would understand that,” said Dupuis. “But short of that I see no good reason to put our clients through 30 unnecessary days.”
Van Hollen has said he will file an appeal defending the same-sex marriage ban in mid- or late July.
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