Employee Benefits Issues in California Following the U.S. Supreme Court's Same-Sex Marriage Decisions
Polsinelli Podcast - Defense of Marriage Act
Supreme Court’s Rulings On Same-Sex Marriage Spark Many Questions On Employee Benefits
Viewer's Guide to Gay Marriage Oral Arguments
On December 13, 2022, President Joe Biden signed H.R. 8404, known as the Respect for Marriage Act, into law, guaranteeing marriage equality for same-sex and interracial couples under federal law. The law passed both houses of...more
On November 29, 2022, the U.S. Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act, which would guarantee marriage equality, including for interracial and same-sex couples, under federal law. The bill, H.R. 8404, passed the Senate in...more
Across the country each June, communities come together to celebrate Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer (LGBTQ) Pride Month. This month of events honors the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in Manhattan while also...more
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recently announced the withdrawal of three proposed rules that, in one case, had been pending since 2014. The first proposed rule that CMS decided to scrap was proposed in...more
In law school, I wrote papers on the tax consequences of death and divorce for same-sex married couples. The conclusions I drew in those academic exercises included advising same-sex married couples to plan for tragedy well...more
Here’s the next chapter in the saga known as Edith Schlain Windsor v. The United States of America. (For a quick recap, please read Tax & Estate Planning – Small Win for Same Sex Couples?). Two representatives of the state...more
A 2013 change in the City of Houston’s employee benefits policy to extend benefits to the same-sex spouses of City employees, intended to align the City’s policy with what its legal counsel determined was a federal...more
In a recent Notice, the Internal Revenue Service set forth some administrative procedures helping taxpayers recalculate gift and generation-skipping transfer tax exemption with respect to gifts and bequests made to or for the...more
Action Item: This is the fourth installment of our Annual Estate Planning Newsletter, and focuses on matters of interest to married couples. We urge you to review this installment to ensure that your 2016 estate and tax...more
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recently issued Notice 2015-86, which provides some additional clarification, in the form of questions and answers, on the treatment of same-sex spouses under tax-qualified retirement plans...more
Following the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in U.S. v. Windsor (in which the Court held that Section 3 of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) was unconstitutional), one of the questions facing sponsors of...more
In IRS Notice 2015-86, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provided guidance to sponsors and administrators of employee benefit plans regarding the application of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges to...more
Last week, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued Notice 2015-86, providing guidance on the application of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges to qualified retirement plans and health and welfare...more
This past June, the United States Supreme Court held in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___, 135 S.Ct. 2584 (2015), that the Fourteenth Amendment (i) requires a state’s civil marriage laws to apply to same-sex couples on the...more
On October 21, 2015, the IRS issued proposed regulations to clarify the treatment of same-sex spouses for federal tax purposes. By way of background, in 2013, the United States Supreme Court held in United States v. Windsor...more
Following up on the Supreme Court’s decisions in both Windsor v. United States and Obergefell v. Hodges, discussed in our earlier Alerts (here and here), on October 21, 2015 the IRS issue proposed regulations clarifying that...more
Prior to the Obergefell decision, the U.S. Supreme Court, in U.S. v. Windsor, struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which mandated that federal laws only recognize opposite-sex marriages. As a result of...more
Same-sex Marriage Now Legal in All 50 States - In 2013, the Supreme Court, in United States v. Windsor, struck down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”) which defined marriage, for Federal purposes, as...more
After last month’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, employee benefit plan sponsors may wonder whether Obergefell affirmatively imposes an obligation for employers to provide health, life,...more
The recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S.Ct. 1039 (June 26, 2015),answered definitively the lingering questions following the Court’s decision last year in Windsor about whether states could...more
The Impact of National Same-Sex Marriage for Employers - Why it matters: How will employers feel the impact of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell v. Hodges? The landmark ruling that the Fourteenth...more
In another federal action that employers need take note of, last week the U.S. Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) issued its “Commission Guidance Regarding the Definition of the Terms ‘Spouse’ and ‘Marriage’ Following the...more
The United States Supreme Court issued its opinion in Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. ___ (2015) on June 26, 2015. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment requires a State to license a marriage...more
In Obergefell v. Hodges, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution requires all 50 states to license marriages between same-sex couples and to recognize same-sex marriages performed out-of-state....more
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you probably are well aware that on June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that same sex couples have a constitutional right to marry and have their marriages recognized across the...more