Obama Extends More Federal Benefits To Same-Sex Couples — But The Rest Are Up To Congress
At an invitation-only meeting with LGBT activists yesterday, the White House announced President Obama today will extend more federal benefits to same-sex couples.
But the administration is cautioning that this is the end of the road — they are excluded by law from acting any further, and Congress must act to make same-sex couples fully equal under the law. “Under the changes, same-sex spouses of Defense Department employees will receive all the benefits of heterosexual husbands and wives,” the New York Times reports. “Federal immigration law will apply equally to gay and straight married couples. The Internal Revenue Service will recognize the marriages of all gay couples. The spouses of gay federal employees will get health insurance, life insurance and flexible spending accounts.”
In addition, federal employees will be able to take leave to care for a same-sex spouse, something that has long been limited to heterosexual married couples. “In almost all instances, federal benefits and obligations for same-sex married couples will be provided, regardless of where the couple lives,†a White House official said late Thursday before the agencies’ formal announcements.
In an extensive look at the changes, Chris Geidner at Buzzfeed reports that the “Justice Department will announce this week that it has done all it can to recognize same-sex couples’ marriages and that Congress will have to act for final recognition — primarily within Veterans Affairs and the Social Security Administration — to take place.”
In the meantime, though, those two agencies plan to announce Friday that they are taking steps at this time to provide the recognition for same-sex couples that they have determined is legally possible now, even in the absence of a congressional fix. For instance, if a person married to someone of the same sex applies for Social Security benefits and moves from a state where the marriage is legal to a state that does not recognize the marriage, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is announcing it will not reassess the person’s eligibility status. The VA, for its part, will now allow same-sex couples in a “committed relationship†to be eligible for burial in VA cemeteries.
Geidner adds that the Obama administration in “most policy announcements made clear that the marriages would be recognized by the federal government so long as they were recognized by the jurisdiction where the marriage took place — referred to as the ‘place of celebration.'”
In a few areas, however, a more restrictive “place of domicile†rule applied by statute or regulation, meaning that the marriage would only be recognized by the federal government if it was recognized by, generally speaking, the state where the couple lives. Although some of the regulatory provisions have been changed over the past year to allow the more broad “place of celebration†rule to apply, Social Security and veterans benefits have limits under statute that the administration has determined can only be changed by Congress.
At a New York City LGBT gala on Tuesday, President Obama, the Times notes, reminded activists that the congressional branch of government still has responsibilities he cannot usurp. “Everybody has just given up so much on Congress that we end up doing something through executive order,” the President said. “And that’s helpful, but it doesn’t reach everybody that needs to be reached. Congress needs to start working again, so let’s make sure that we keep the pressure up there.â€
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Image by Barack Obama via Flickr
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