In recent months employers around the country, have been scrambling to keep up with developments with respect to the evolving rights of employees in same-sex relationships. This articles touches on some recent guidance in this regard from federal agencies.

State law controls -

Since the United States Supreme Court’s decision in United States v. Windsor last year, whereby the Court ruled that Section 3 of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional, additional guidance has been released by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the U.S. Department of the Treasury (Treasury), and the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), a division of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL). As a reminder to employers, Section 3 of DOMA defined marriage as the “legal union of one man and one woman.” Thus, under DOMA as originally enacted, only people of opposite sex could be married for purposes of federal law, which encompasses the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA), the Internal Revenue Code, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA), the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), and the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), to name but a few.