What was the precise result of the cases?
As a matter of procedure, in both cases Judge Tauro granted the Plaintiffs’ Motion for Summary Judgment and, at the same time, denied Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss. That means that the Court – all at once – denied the federal government’s request that the cases should not move forward and should be dismissed, and he granted the plaintiffs’ request that the case should end here with judgments in favor of the plaintiffs. In effect, the Court’s rulings end the cases at the district court level. Having lost both cases, the federal government now has to decide whether it will appeal Judge Tauro’s rulings to the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which sits in Boston. As a matter of substance, and most simply, Judge Tauro ruled that Section 3 of DOMA violates the United States Constitution and therefore cannot continue to be applied as to the plaintiffs in the two cases. There is one small caveat. In the case filed by GLAD, the Court did dismiss one single claim on a techn
