Welcome to Pride 2025…Regardless
June 2, 2025
I’ve been writing and speaking on LGBTQ+ rights as they intersect with estate planning and otherwise since the inception of my firm. (The advocacy is related to my lawyer origin story.) In fact, serendipity had our firm launch on the day Illinois passed the Civil Union Act – June 1, 2011.
Then, in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled for marriage equality in Obergefell v. Hodges. Still, that ruling was a plurality, which means the ruling could be readily overturned if the Court agrees to hear another marriage equality case, if the case is founded on a different legal argument.
Perhaps reading the tea leaves or understanding the direction of the Court, in 2022, former President Biden, signed into law the Respect for Marriage Act. The law undergirded interracial marriage, repealed the infamous DOMA, and required states with mini-DOMAs to respect same-sex marriages if the couple was married in a jurisdiction that provided same-sex marriages. So, same-sex marriage is safe, right?
DOMA was signed into law in 1996 by former President Bill Clinton. The law defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman.
Technically, same-sex marriage is safe. However, the benefits that accompany marriage are still governed by state and federal law and the doctrines espousing states’ rights are more popular now and the Supreme Court has a different composition than it did in 2015. So, not only are same-sex marital rights in question, but rights that were afforded LGBTQ+ persons are in the line of fire.