Articles Tagged with Department of Justice

On Monday, the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California, in Los Angeles, made an unusual ruling for a bankruptcy court: it declared Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional. In that case, a legally married same-sex couple in California tried to file a joint petition for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. The U.S. trustee filed a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the two men were ineligible to file a joint petition because the federal government did not recognize them as married, and the bankruptcy code allows only married couples to file joint petitions. The court denied the motion to dismiss, concluding that no “valid governmental interest is advanced by DOMA as applied to the Debtors.”