This State Bar of California Health Law E-Bulletin was published on December 16, 2014.
Medicare and Medicaid Program; Revisions to Certain Patient’s Rights Conditions of Participation and Conditions of Coverage
Last year the U.S. Supreme Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) was unconstitutional because it violated the Fifth Amendment. United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675, 2695 (2013). Section 3 defined the word “marriage” to mean only a legal union between one man and one woman, and so “spouse” could only refer to a person of the opposite sex who was a husband or wife. 1 U.S.C. § 7. The Supreme Court argued that the federal prohibition of same-sex marriages that states had lawfully recognized “undermined both the public and private significance of state sanctioned same-sex marriages,” and that Section 3’s ‘‘purpose and effect [was] to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect’’ 133 S. Ct. at 2694-95. … Read more →