Article on All of the Benefits Impacted by the DOMA Ruling
The Defense of Marriage Act(DOMA) provides definitions of “marriage” and “spouse” that are to be used inconstruing the meaning of a federal law and, thus, affect the interpretation ofa wide variety of federal laws in which marital status is a factor.1 In 1997, we issued a reportidentifying 1,049 federal statutory provisions classified to the United StatesCode in which benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital statusor in which marital status is a factor.2 In preparing the 1997report, we limited our search to laws enacted prior to September 21, 1996, thedate DOMA was signed into law.
Recently, you asked us to updateour 1997 compilation. We have identified 120 statutory provisions involvingmarital status that were enacted between September 21, 1996, and December 31,2003. During the same period, 31 statutory provisions involving marital statuswere repealed or amended in such a way as to eliminate marital status as afactor. Consequently, as of December 31, 2003, our research identified a totalof 1,138 federal statutory provisions classified to the United States Code inwhich marital status is a factor in determining or receiving benefits, rights,and privileges.
To prepare the updatedlist, we used the same research methods and legal databases that we employed in1997. Accordingly, the same caveats concerning the completeness of our collection of laws apply tothis updated compilation, as explained more fully in our prior report. For example,because of the inherent limitations of any global electronic search and themany ways in which the laws of the United States Code may deal with maritalstatus, we cannot guarantee that we have captured every individual law in theUnited States Code in which marital status figures. However, we believe thatthe probability is high that the updated list identifies federal programs inthe United States Code in which marital status is a factor.
We have organized ourresearch using the same 13 subject categories as the 1997 report. As agreedwith your staff, in addition to providing you with a primary table of newstatutory provisions involving marital status, we have prepared a second tableidentifying those provisions in our prior report that subsequently have beenrepealed or amended in a manner that eliminates marital status as a factor.Finally, in a third table, we have listed those provisions identified in our1997 report that have since been relocated to a different section of the UnitedStates Code. We have also attached a brief summary of the 13 research categories;a full description of each category is set forth in the 1997 report.
We plan no further distributionof this report until 30 days after the date of this letter. At that time, wewill send copies of this letter to interested congressional committees.