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defense of marriage act
A New LGBTQ Victory Is a Victory for All of Us: The Social Security Administration Does the Right Thing
Does the government work for us or against us? As the result of a decision by the Social Security Administration ("SSA"), the government is working better for all of us today. For convincing SSA to do the right thing, we should thank Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Representative Mark Takano (D-CA), and 119 of their colleagues. We are also indebted, for this victory, to two effective, dedicated nonprofits, Justice in Aging and the GLBTQ Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), as well as Foley Hoag, LLP, the law firm that assisted them.
Apr 16, 2016
Does the government work for us or against us? As the result of a decision by the Social Security Administration ("SSA"), the government is working better for all of us today. For convincing SSA to do the right thing, we should thank Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Representative Mark Takano (D-CA), and 119 of their colleagues. We are also indebted, for this victory, to two effective, dedicated nonprofits, Justice in Aging and the GLBTQ Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), as well as Foley Hoag, LLP, the law firm that assisted them.
SSA is responsible for two crucially important programs. It administers Social Security, which provides a floor of economic protection in the form of insurance to working families whose wages are lost as the result of death, disability or old age. It also administers a companion program, Supplemental Security Income ("SSI"), which provides means-tested benefits to extremely low-income seniors and people with disabilities.
These programs exemplify the good that can be done when all of us work together through our government to improve all of our lives. But, despite its positive mission, SSA has been engaging in a destructive practice that represents government not working for us, but against us. SSA has been sending, to hundreds of thousands of Social Security beneficiaries and SSI recipients, bills for what it concludes are overpayments.
These are not cases of fraud (which are vanishingly rare) but, frequently, cases where it was the government itself that made the error. The beneficiaries and recipients did nothing wrong. They reported all information correctly, but the government did not act on the information in a timely way or created the error in some other way. To add insult to injury, our government outrageously calls those receiving these notices "debtors," though they have done nothing wrong, and, indeed, may be scrupulous about paying their bills on time.
The federal government has enormous power. When it chooses to go after someone, it is generally an intimidating experience even when the person in its crosshairs is an innocent, law abiding citizen. If this powerful entity is seeking large sums of money that you don't have, it can be a disruptive and upsetting experience. Moreover, in the case of Social Security and SSI overpayments, the government is going after people who are generally our most vulnerable fellow Americans. Over the last year, this intimidating power got turned on the most vulnerable members of the LGBTQ community, as a result of the 2013 landmark Supreme Court decision, US v. Windsor.
The Windsor case struck down the offensively-named Defense of Marriage Act. As a result of the Supreme Court decision, same-sex couples who were legally married under state law finally had their marriages recognized by the federal government. For couples in which one or both partners received SSI, this important victory was followed by a distressing letter from the government. Under SSI's stringent and complicated rules, married recipients receive lower benefits than those who are unmarried. Consequently, a year after that landmark case, SSA began reviewing its SSI rolls to determine whether the benefits it was paying some of its recipients, now that same-sex marriages were recognized as marriages.
When SSA found that benefits were now too high, it did not just change the benefit level going forward. It sought repayment of the difference between the two amounts for every benefit paid all the way back to July 1, 2013, the month following the Windsor decision. Here was the government coming after people for large sums of money that they didn't have.
Take, for example, the case of Mary S., a veteran living in New York. She has served our nation with distinction, in Iraq and elsewhere. Unfortunately, she has suffered mightily for her service. Among other horrors she experienced, she witnessed her best friend, standing right next to her, in Fallujah, blown up and killed instantly. She now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder with all the limitations and hardships that brings. As a result of this wartime disability, she is receiving the Social Security disability benefit she earned. Because that benefit is so low, however -- just $448 a month -- she also found that she qualified for a small SSI benefit, as well.
Despite her many hardships, Mary was fortunate to fall in love and marry her wife in 2012. She immediately reported her marriage at the local SSA office, but was told that it didn't affect her benefits. After the Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act in 2013, the marriage all of a sudden did affect those SSI benefits, a fact generally known only to experts who have studied the complicated statute and its regulations. Because Mary's wife receives a small monthly Social Security benefit of around $880, and because they are married so that income is considered joint income, Mary was now considered to have income that was too high.
More than two years after the Windsor decision, Mary received a notice that she would no longer receive her SSI benefit. This was difficult, low as their combined income is, but manageable. Outrageously, though, along with the news that her income would drop substantially going forward, she was hit with a bill for $6,609. That was the amount of money Mary had innocently received and spent on rent, food, and other necessities for the prior two years. The bill was from the very government she had enlisted to defend. She had zero savings. Indeed, the only money she had when the notice came in the mail was $5.00!
Imagine how distressing that would be. Like Mary, the people the government is seeking Social Security and SSI overpayments from are generally not wealthy people. They tend to be our most vulnerable fellow citizens. Nearly half of unmarried elderly Social Security beneficiaries and nearly a quarter of married couples rely on Social Security for virtually all of their income. These are not people who can just dip into their savings accounts when the government decides it has made a mistake and wants the overpayment back. These are people who are living paycheck to paycheck, already struggling to put groceries on the table and afford increasingly expensive prescription drugs.
And SSI recipients are even more vulnerable. To qualify for SSI, an individual can have close to no income or assets. To an even greater extent than Social Security beneficiaries, people who receive SSI are not equipped to handle a sudden "debt" they had no idea existed.
So how much money is recouped by preying on the most vulnerable? As it turns out, a negative amount. Last year, a report from the Office of the Inspector General found that SSA spends three times more than it collects trying to recover overpayments. Between 2008 and 2013, SSA spent over $323 million to collect $109.4 million in the low-dollar overpayments. There is no moral or fiscal justification for this cruel practice.
In the case of overpayments resulting from the striking down of the Defense of Marriage Act, the injustice has now been corrected. That is thanks to the work of many dedicated individuals. Justice in Aging, GLBTQ Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) and the law firm of Foley Hoag brought litigation to stop these collection efforts. Learning about the litigation and the issue, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) joined with Representative Mark Takano (D-CA) and 119 of their colleagues to send a letter to the Acting Social Security Commissioner urging a blanket waiver, so that SSI recipients in same-sex marriages are not hit with overpayments.
To her credit, the Acting Commissioner listened. SSA has now announced a waiver process which identifies the SSI beneficiaries who were affected and essentially exempts them from being targeted for overpayments. This news comes as a huge relief to some of our country's most vulnerable couples. Justice is being done in this case.
Now, it is time for SSA to continue down the right path by ending the crusade to collect overpayments that beneficiaries (or their relatives) received through no fault of their own. The government should do everything it can to assure accurate payments, but when mistakes happen, as they inevitably will, the cost should not be thrust upon the individuals, who often will have no ability to repay.
Although SSA has a waiver process in situations that violate "equity and good conscience," that isn't good enough. This places the burden on the individual. Imagine, if English is not your first language, if you never finished high school, if you have barely any income and no savings. Imagine receiving a letter from the government stating that you owe a staggering amount, an amount so large that you have no idea how you can possibly pay it. That kind of distress should not be rained down upon law-abiding American by their government, even if a waiver will be granted if and when one is sought.
While politicians earn points by being hard on so-called government "fraud, waste, and abuse," these efforts at recoupment cruelly torment those our Social Security system is intended to serve. If these politicians are really concerned about fraud, waste and abuse, they should increase the enforcement dollars overseeing large and powerful government contractors and auditing the wealthiest taxpayers. Going after ordinary, law abiding citizens is nothing short of harassment and bullying.
It is time that we remind our government that it works for us. It should simply stop going after the accidental overpayments going to the least among us. It should focus its resources on making our lives better, not worse.
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Sharpening Contrast with Clinton, Sanders Touts Bold Positions in Tough Times
'When the going gets tough, when leadership was needed, I was there,' Bernie Sanders tells Rachel Maddow
Oct 27, 2015
On the campaign trail and in media interviews, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is drawing increasingly sharp contrasts between himself and Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. He presents his consistent record on critical issues as evidence of their "real differences."
"I have known Hillary Clinton for 25 years," Sanders said in an interview Monday with Charlie Rose on PBS. "I have enormous respect for her. She's a friend. But when you're running for president of the United States, it's important to differentiate the differences between the candidates, and there are real differences between Hillary Clinton and myself. I have been extremely consistent with my views for many years."
In an appearance Monday night on The Rachel Maddow Show, Sanders addressed why it matters that, as Maddow put it, he was "right first" on issues like gay rights, trade policy, and the Keystone XL pipeline.
"That's an excellent and fair question," he said, "and the answer is: We live in a tough world, and leadership counts. It's great that people evolve and change their minds; I respect that. But it's important to stand up when the going gets tough. And if you look at my career, I have taken on every special interest when it was tough."
"Where we are right now in American history is, we have a rigged economy with Wall Street and the big money interests exerting huge power over the economy, we have a corrupt campaign finance system with super PACs prepared to buy elections," Sanders continued. "What the American people and Democrats have to know [is] which candidate historically has had the guts to stand up to powerful people and [make] difficult decisions."
"When the going gets tough when leadership was needed, I was there," he declared.
In recent days, Sanders has hit back particularly hard against Clinton's narrative regarding the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)--the 1996 law that defined marriage for federal purposes as the union of one man and one woman--which the former First Lady recently described to Maddow as a "defensive action" meant to forestall even more discriminatory measures like a constitutional amendment.
But Sanders and gay rights activists say that wasn't the case. "Now today, some are trying to rewrite history by saying they voted for one anti-gay law to stop something worse," he told a crowd in Iowa over the weekend.
"I have had in many years of politics had to make tough votes," he elaborated in his interview with Maddow. "The times then were very, very different. We had a lot of homophobia going on, a right-wing Republican leadership clearly trying to push this anti-gay legislation, and it bothered me to hear Secretary Clinton saying, 'Well, DOMA, what it really was about was preventing something even worse'."
"It wasn't true," Sanders said emphatically, quoting Clinton ally Hilary Rosen, who tweeted over the weekend: "Note to my friends Bill and #Hillary: Pls stop saying DOMA was to prevent something worse. It wasn't, I was there."
"It wasn't true," Sanders repeated on Monday night. "That was a tough vote, it was. And there were a lot of decent people who, in their hearts, wanted to vote no and voted yes for political reasons. I didn't. That's all the point that I want to make."
In another instance that framed fundamental differences between Sanders and Clinton, the U.S. Senator from Vermont "put his campaign where his mouth is," Engadget reported when he spoke at a picket line with Verizon union workers in New York City on Monday.
As Huffington Post labor reporter Dave Jamieson noted, "[b]oth candidates have placed economic inequality at the core of their campaigns as they seek the nomination, though it's much harder to imagine Clinton walking a picket line aimed at a telecom giant."
In fact, The Nation's John Nichols wrote on Monday such clear distinctions were "the takeaway message from a weekend of high-stakes politics in which Sanders positioned himself as a candidate whose long-term commitment to progressive ideals, and whose willingness to act on those ideals even in the most challenging of moments, suggested not just 'authenticity'--to borrow the buzzword of the moment--but a context in which Democrats might assess his promise to 'govern based on principle, not poll numbers.'
"I pledge to you that every day I will fight for the public interest, not the corporate interests," Sanders said in Iowa on Saturday, as his young supporters answered with thunderous applause. "I will not abandon any segment of American society--whether you're gay or black or Latino, poor or working class--just because it is politically expedient at a given time."
"The proposition Sanders offered was clear enough," Nichols concluded. "While others might make promises, he can be counted on to stand firm for economic and social justice, for peace and the planet."
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Today's Court Ruling, Though Expected, is Still Shocking - Especially for Those Who Grew Up LGBT in the US
Jun 26, 2015
By a 5-4 majority, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today that laws denying same-sex couples the right to marry violate the "due process" and "equal protection" guarantees of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. With or without the court ruling, full-scale marriage equality was an inevitability thanks to rapid trans-ideological generational change in how this issue was perceived; today's decision simply accelerated the outcome.
All the legal debates over the ruling are predictable and banal. Most people proclaim - in the words of Justice Scalia's bizarre and somewhat deranged dissent - that it is a "threat to democracy" and a "judicial putsch" whenever laws they like are judicially invalidated, but a profound vindication for freedom when laws they dislike are nullified. That's how people like Scalia can, on one day, demand that campaign finance laws enacted by Congress and supported by large majorities of citizens be struck down (Citizens United), but the next day declare that judicial invalidation of a democratically enacted law "robs the People of the most important liberty they asserted in the Declaration of Independence and won in the Revolution of 1776: the freedom to govern themselves."
Far more interesting than that sort of naked hypocrisy masquerading as lofty intellectual principles are the historical and cultural aspects of today's decision. Although the result was expected on a rational level, today's decision is still viscerally shocking for any LGBT citizen who grew up in the U.S., or their family members and close friends. It's almost hard to believe that same-sex marriage is now legal in all 50 states. Just consider how embedded, pervasive and recent anti-gay sentiment has been in the fabric of American life.
In the 1970s - just 40 years ago - the existence of gay people was all but unmentionable, particularly outside of small enclaves in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco. If your first inkling of a gay identity took place in that decade, as mine did, you necessarily assumed that you were alone, that you were plagued with some sort of rare, aberrational disease, since there was no way even to know gayness existed except from the most malicious and casual mockery of it. It simply wasn't meaningfully discussed: anywhere. It was so unmentionable that Liberace, of all people, long insisted to his fans that he was a "bachelor" due to his inability to recover from his tragic break-up with his fiance, the Norwegian figure skater Sonja Henie. With exceedingly few exceptions, openly gay figures in politics, sports, or entertainment were nonexistent.
In the 1980s - just 30 years ago - the U.S. held its first-ever sustained, serious public discussion of homosexuality. But that discussion was forced by the advent ofa hideous, terrorizing, mysterious disease, which - in the public mind's and the mind of many young LGBTs - came to define what it meant to be gay. Even then, as thousands of Americans were dying, the taboo against public discussions of homosexuality was so potent that politicians like Ronald Reagan and Ed Koch were petrified even of discussing this public health crisis, allowing it to grow and metastasizefor years with almost no governmental mobilizing against it. In 1986, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of states such as Georgia to criminalize gay sex and arrest and prosecute those who engaged it, on the ground - in the words of Chief Justice Berger - that "there is no such thing as a fundamental right to commit homosexual sodomy" and that "condemnation of those practices is firmly rooted in Judeo-Christian moral and ethical standards."
In the 1990s - just 20 years ago - anti-gay sentiment was so widespread that Bill Clinton signed two grotesquely bigoted and damaging laws: "the Defense of Marriage Act", which barred the federal government from offering any benefits to same-sex couples (including crucial immigration and survivor rights), and "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which codified the ban on LGBTs serving in the military. DOMA passed the Senate on September 10, 1996 - less than 20 years ago - by a vote of 85-14, with the support of every Republican as well as people like Joe Biden, Chris Dodd, Pat Leahy, Patty Murray, and Paul Wellstone. In 1992, the State of Colorado actually enacted a constitutional amendment - Amendment 2 - overturning all existing local laws and banning all future ones that outlawed anti-gay discrimination. Gallup never polled on same-sex marriage until 1996, and when it did, found that Americans opposed it by a whopping 68-27% majority.
In the 2000s - just 10 years ago - opposition to gay marriage was so pervasive that every state referendum on the question rejected it. Putting it on the ballot became a vital GOP strategy for winning elections, a tactic engineered by then-closeted-gay-GOP-Chairman Ken Mehlman, who later came out and apologized. It was only in 2003 - exactly 12 years ago today - when the Supreme Court reversed its 1986 ruling and held that the criminalization of gay sex is unconstitutional (and even then, only by a 5-4 majority) - meaning that it's only been 12 years that gay people have had the right to have sex in America without being prosecuted for it. In both the 2004 and 2008 election, the presidential nominees for both parties were adamantly opposed to same-sex marriage.
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