The
Tenth Amendment (Amendment X) to the United States Constitution, which
is part of the Bill of Rights, was ratified on December 15, 1791. The Tenth
Amendment restates the Constitution's principle of federalism by providing that
powers not granted to the national government nor prohibited to the states by
the Constitution of the United States are reserved to the states or the people.
In
an enormous victory for marriage equality, a federal judge in Boston, Thursday,
July 8th, ruled, in two separate cases, that a critical part of the
federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional.
In
one challenge brought by the state of Massachusetts, Judge Joseph Tauro ruled
that Congress violated the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution when it
passed DOMA and took from the states decisions concerning which couples can be
considered married. In the other, Gill v. Office of Personnel Management, he
ruled DOMA violates the equal protection principles embodied in the Due Process
Clause of the Fifth Amendment.