According to the same article, BLAG has asked the court to put on hold Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management, believing the questions asked in that case will be answered by a court ruling on Massachusetts v. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. http://www.metroweekly.com/poliglot/2012/06/house-gop-leaders-will-ask-supreme-court-by-the-en.html Not a surprise, but the timing is perhaps a boon to the GOP, as there will likely be plenty of press coverage on it in the month preceeding the presidential election in November. Even so, if cert is granted a ruling in the case won't likely come before June 2013. The First Circuit issued a very interesting ruling, tailor made to receive a hearing by the Supreme Court. I'm not persuaded that it's a ruling that favors BLAG's case, though. That ruling avoided finding that gay people are a suspect class, and instead scrutinized the case carefully, concluding that DOMA lacked a rational basis. Please keep responses in the scope of the First Circuit's rulings and the chances for its success/failure on appeal. You can find the text of that ruling at the link below for reference: http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/getopn.pl?OPINION=10-2204P.01A
They concluded no such thing. They determined it was not "adequate" The Gill plaintiffs say that DOMA fails under the so-called rational basis test, traditionally used in cases not involving "suspect" classifications. The federal defendants said that DOMA would survive such rational basis scrutiny but now urge, instead, that DOMA fails under so-called intermediate scrutiny. In our view, these competing formulas are inadequate fully to describe governing precedent.... We conclude, without resort to suspect classifications or any impairment of Baker, that the rationales offered do not provide adequate support for section 3 of DOMA.
