What is the purpose of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)?
The federal Defense of Marriage Act, enacted in 1996, does two things. First, it defines marriage “for all purposes of federal law” as the union of one man and one woman. Second, it protects states, under the Constitution’s “full faith and credit” clause, from being forced to recognize as a marriage any “union” other than that of one man and one woman. (This presumes that one or more states would legalize phony “marriages.”) So, what would happen to these cases? Any case that might arise regarding the definition of marriage under DOMA would be decided by a federal district court or administrative court. But there would be no appeal from that decision. Congress has the right to limit the appellate jurisdiction of the Supreme Court and all inferior courts, and this legislation invokes that right. As a consequence, there can be no legally binding precedent set by any such case because the decisions of trial courts are not binding under the stare decisis doctrine. (This doctrine says that
