Corporate Call for Change in Gay Marriage
Case
By ​
ERIK ECKHOLM​
Published: February 27, 2013 ​56 Comments
Arguing that the federal Defense of Marriage Act imposes serious administrative and financial costs on
their operations, some of the nation’s largest companies ​
filed a supporting brief​
with the ​SupremeCourt​
on Wednesday, urging it to overturn a section of the act that denies federal benefits andrecognition to same­sex couples.
Edith Windsor is challenging part of the law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman forthe purposes of federal laws and programs.
The brief drew 278 signers, including more than 200 companies — among them giants like Citigroup,Apple, Mars and Alcoa — as well as city governments, law firms and other groups. In statements on
Wednesday, many declared their firm opposition to discrimination based on sexual orientation. But the“friend of the court” brief focused more on the burdens imposed by the 1996 law on companies thatoffer benefits to same­sex spouses.
The brief was one of many received by the court as it considered landmark cases on gay rights andmarriage. With a wide swath of leading companies signing on, it is the latest sign of the rapid shift
toward acceptance of same­sex marriage in the corporate world as well as in the country. Recent polls
indicate that a majority of Americans now agrees that same­sex marriage should be legal. Nine states
plus the District of Columbia have legalized gay marriage and three more states recognize gay
marriages performed elsewhere.
Prominent ​Republicans also announced​
they would also file a Supreme Court brief in support of a suitseeking to strike down Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative barring same­sex marriage, and all
similar bans.
In the brief, the signers said the federal law “puts us, as employers, to unnecessary cost andadministrative complexity.” But the law also, the brief stated, “forces us to treat one class of ourlawfully married employees differently than another, when our success depends upon the welfare andmorale of all employees.”
For companies operating in the states where same­sex marriage is legal, the ban on federal benefits
under the law has proved a headache. Contradictory marriage laws in different states have also
complicated benefits and other programs of companies operating in multiple states.
Treating heterosexual and same­sex married employees differently under federal law, the brief said,
imposed high administrative costs as companies maintained dual systems of tax withholding andpayroll. It results in extra tax burdens for both companies and employees with health plans, and canaffect payments including retirement, pension and life insurance as well as having a bad effect on
morale.
“We feel it’s critical for the court to understand the burdens that this law imposes on both employers
and employees,” said James Klein, president of the American Benefits Council in Washington, whosemembers include a broad cross­section of major employers. “DOMA is not just a piece of social
legislation, but it also has very practical costs for the business community and the people they employ.”
Those signing the brief included major companies like Walt Disney, Starbucks, Amazon, Microsoft,
Levi Strauss, Marriott International and New York Life, as well as smaller firms like the U.S. Balloon
Company in Brooklyn and Holdredge Wines in California.
The list also includes Wall Street firms like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
The brief was filed in support of United States v. Windsor, No. 12­307, which challenged a part of
DOMA that defined marriage as being only between a man and a woman for the purposes of more than
1,000 federal laws and programs.
The case involved Edith Windsor of New York City, who had ​married Thea Clara Spyer​
in Canada in2007. Ms. Spyer died in 2009, leaving her property to Ms. Windsor. But the Internal Revenue Service
said that under DOMA, Ms. Windsor could not be treated as a surviving spouse and she faced a large
tax bill that a spouse in an opposite­sex marriage would not have to pay.
Ms. Windsor sued and a federal appeals court struck down the 1996 law, the second time an appeals
court called this part of DOMA unconstitutional.
The case is one of two now before the Supreme Court concerning same­sex marriage; a second,
involving Proposition 8, is the subject of another amicus brief supported by some of the same
corporations that signed the Windsor brief.
The court is expected to hear arguments on both cases in March.
The Windsor amicus brief, mainly drafted by Sabin Willett, a lawyer with Bingham McCutchen in
Boston, outlined the costs imposed on both employers and employees when companies must maintain
dual policies for those in same­sex and opposite­sex marriages. But it also argues that thediscrimination undermines their business performance.
“It’s 2013, the face of the nation is changing and to be competitive, to win in business today, you needto change with the demographics of the nation,” said Bernadette Harrigan, an assistant vice president in
the law department of the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Company, one of the signers, who has
been active on gay rights issues.
Several companies, in statements issued Wednesday, stressed their concerns about the impact of
DOMA not only on costs but also on fairness.
“Mars’ decision to support the amicus brief was based on our belief that all married Mars associates
should be treated equally under the law,” said a statement from the candy maker.
A Johnson & Johnson statement said: “We have joined the amicus brief because, as an employer, we
believe that all lawfully married employees should be treated by our company in the same way.”
John Holdredge, of Holdredge Wines in Healdsburg, Calif., said in a telephone interview, “We don’t
want to have to ask employees about their orientation and we don’t want to have to discriminate.”

Corporate America Weighs In on Treatment
of Gay Couples
By ​TARA SIEGEL BERNARD​
February 28, 2013, 10:48 am
Gay couples face a host financial and legal complications because of the federal law that bans same­sex
marriage. As a result, they often end up having to pay more for a host of things — ​tax preparation​,
health benefits and estate planning, among other things.
So it’s not terribly surprising that the law complicates things for same­sex partners’ employers, too,
especially when a couple’s union may be recognized in a particular state, but not in the eyes of thefederal government. Not only does that leave plenty of room for error in the administration of employee
benefits, it also forces employers to treat their employees differently simply because of their sexual
orientation.
As a result, ​more than 200 companies​— among them giants like Citigroup, Apple, Mars and Amazon— as well as city governments, law firms and others, are arguing that the law that bans same­sex
marriage imposes serious administrative and financial costs on their operations. The companies filed a
supporting brief​
with the​Supreme Court​
on Wednesday, urging it to overturn a section of the Defenseof Marriage Act that denies federal benefits and recognition to same­sex couples.
“It puts us, as employers, to unnecessary cost and administrative complexity, and regardless ofour business or professional judgment forces us to treat one class of our lawfully married employees
differently than another, when our success depends upon the welfare and morale of all employees,”
they wrote in the brief.
We’ve documented these inequities and complications as part of the “​
Cost of Being Gay​
” series on
Bucks. For instance, gay employees who add their partners to their health benefits are taxed on thevalue of that coverage (if the partner is not considered a dependent) since their unions are not federally
recognized. Opposite­sex married couples are not subject to the tax, so some employers have attempted
to equalize the playing field by ​covering the extra costs​
for same­sex employees. We’ve tracked these
efforts on a chart, which can be ​found here​.
We’ve also written about the​errors that can arise​when organizations have to keep track of those extra
taxes, including ​Yale University​‘s failure to withhold the proper amount of income for a group of
workers.

Then, there are the variety of questions that are easily answered for married employees with
opposite­sex spouses, but not so straightforward for gay employees: If I get married, ​can I
automatically add my spouse to my health insurance​outside the annual “open enrollment” period? Will
my partner​even be covered​? What about ​our​children​​?

What other administrative and benefit­related issues do same­sex couples face in the workplace? Pleaseshare your thoughts in the comment section below.

In Supreme Court Briefs, Employers Come
Out for Gay Marriageth
By Leslie Kwoh February 27​

Nearly 300 businesses have filed a legal brief with the Supreme Court arguing for gay rights, the latest
sign of support for same­sex couples in the corporate world.
The employers, which include Apple Inc., Starbucks Corp., UBS AG, Ernst & Young LLP, BlackRock
Inc., Bain & Co., AIG Inc., Amazon.com Inc. and Alaska Airlines, filed the friend­of­the­court brief
Wednesday morning to challenge the Defense of Marriage Act, which prevents same­sex couples fromenjoying the same tax, retirement and leave benefits that other married couples get under federal law.
The employers cited talent recruitment and retention as one of their biggest concerns, adding that thelaw burdens their businesses with “unnecessary cost and administrative complexity.”“Our organizations are engaged in national and international competition – for talent, customers, andbusiness,” the brief states. “That competition demands teamwork, and teamwork thrives when theorganization minimizes distracting differences, and focuses on a common mission.”
The brief was filed in one of ​two gay­marriage cases​
scheduled to be heard by the U.S. Supreme Courtin late March. The case involves Edith Windsor, who was hit with a $363,000 estate tax bill after her
spouse, Thea Clara Spyer, died in 2009 – fees she would have been exempt from had her spouse beenmale.
Dozens of companies are also expected to submit an amicus brief Thursday in the second case,
Hollingsworth v. Perry, according to ​Fortune​. More than 60 businesses have already signed onto thebrief, which challenges the constitutionality of California’s Proposition 8 initiative banning same­sex
marriage.
One reason that companies are signing on is that California’s law puts them at a recruiting
disadvantage—rather than staying in a state where they cannot marry, gay employees may opt to findwork in states more hospitable to same­sex unions.
According to the brief obtained by Fortune, potential recruits “may forgo the opportunity to work in
California, and prefer other states (like Iowa, New York, and Massachusetts) or other nations (likeSpain, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, Portugal, or Belgium) where they can be married and obtainequal treatment and respect under the law.”Before same­sex marriage became legal in Washington State last year, for example, companies
headquartered there, such as Starbucks and Amazon, would have encountered difficulty luring gay andlesbian talent from states like New York, which already had gay marriage laws on the books, says
Deena Fidas, a deputy director of Human Rights Campaign, an advocacy organization. Amazon CEO
Jeff Bezos ​donated $2.5 million​
to the gay­marriage cause in his state last July.
“When recruiting, companies want to make sure there are as few barriers as possible,” she says.
The legal filings echo a growing movement among corporations. A ​Human Rights Campaign study
released in November found that more than 70 major businesses had made public statements supportingsame­sex marriage or opposing gay­marriage bans in the previous 18 months.
To be sure, not all workplaces are welcoming to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees. An
estimated 41% of LGBT professionals in the U.S. remain closeted at work, according to ​a recent study
by the Center for Talent Innovation, a nonprofit research group.
And, as ​the Journal​
noted last July, while some top executives are coming out of the closet, few, if any,prominent CEOs are openly gay.

Federal Gay Marriage Ban Hurts The
Bottom Line, Businesses Argue
by Erica Ryan; February 28, 2013 1:56 PM
After years of legal wrangling, the Defense of Marriage Act — the law that prevents the federal
government from recognizing marriage as anything but a "legal union between one man and one
woman" — comes before the Supreme Court next month.
Among those urging the court to strike down the ban are some familiar names, like Google, Apple,
Facebook, JetBlue and Starbucks. They were among a group of more than 200 businesses that ​filed afriend of the court brief​
this week, taking a corporate approach to the gay marriage debate.
As ​The New York Times reports​: "The brief was one of many received by the court as it considered
landmark cases on gay rights and marriage. With a wide swath of leading companies signing on, it is
the latest sign of the rapid shift toward acceptance of same­sex marriage in the corporate world as wellas in the country."
The problem, the businesses argue, is that while they operate in places where gay marriage isrecognized under state law, "DOMA, a federal law withholding marital benefits from some lawful
marriages but not others, requires that employers treat one employee differently from another, wheneach is married, and each marriage is equally lawful. DOMA thus impairs employer/employee relations
and other business interests."
The law means employers must treat employees in same­sex marriages differently when it comes tothings like health care, retirement and taxes, they say, causing "unnecessary cost and administrativecomplexity."
In a statement Thursday, Apple spokeswoman Amy Bessette said, "DOMA hurts legally marriedsame­sex couples and prevents companies from treating all employees as equals. Apple strongly
supports marriage equality and we hope the Supreme Court will declare the law unconstitutional."
Among the businesses signing the brief was one familiar from last year's presidential campaign, as the
Boston Globe notes​: "The group also included Bain & Co., the Boston consulting firm that launched
Mitt Romney's career before he started Bain Capital. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor,
opposed gay marriage when it became legal here in 2004 and opposed it in his campaign for president
last year."
The Obama administration has also ​gone on the record​
asking the court to get rid of the federal ban onrecognizing same­sex marriages.
The other landmark gay­marriage case the court is considering in March is a challenge to Proposition 8,
the ban on same­sex marriage in California. A group of more than 80 Republicans made headlines thisweek for signing on to a brief asking the court to overturn it.
But as ​NPR's Don Gonyea pointed out​
, "only two of the names on the list so far are sitting GOP
officeholders, both members of Congress: Richard Hanna of New York and Ileana Ros­Lehtinen of
Florida."More are people who have held office or run for it in the past, like "Meg Whitman, the former CEO ofeBay who opposed gay marriage as a candidate for governor of California in 2010. There's also former
Utah governor and GOP presidential hopeful Jon Huntsman and Christie Todd Whitman, a former
governor and EPA administrator."
And the GOP's official position on gay marriage hasn't changed. House Republicans are defending the
Defense of Marriage Act in court, since the administration has declined to.
The Obama administration may outline where it stands on the Proposition 8 case in a filing with theSupreme Court this week.

Hundreds of businesses join brief in Supreme
Court opposing DOMA
Alana Semuels; February 27, 2013, 7:13 a.m.
New York— Days after prominent Republicans said they were ​signing a legal brief​
arguing that gay
couples have a right to marry, 278 employers have filed an amicus brief in the Supreme Court, arguingthe same thing.
The businesses include ​Apple Inc.​,​
Broadcom Corp.​,​
Citigroup Inc.​, Facebook Inc., Johnson &Johnson, ​Marriott International​
Inc., Microsoft, Orbitz, ​Starbucks​, Twitter and the ​Walt Disney Co​.
Chambers of Commerce in San Diego, Boston, Portland, Seattle and San Francisco also joined thebrief.
"DOMA, a federal law withholding marital benefits from some lawful marriages but not others,
requires that employers treat one employee differently from another," the brief argues. That's especiallytrue for employers who operate in any of the 12 states that now permit gay marriage, the brief says,
because the states recognize marriages but the federal government does not. It was written by Sabin
Willett, of Boston firm Bingham McCutchen LLP.
Employers must compete in order to attract the best employees, and they do so by offering benefits
packages, which help promote employee loyalty. But the Defense of Marriage Act "forces amici toconsider the gender of the spouses of our lawfully married employees when determining the scope andmanner of benefits that may be extended to the spouses."
DOMA also prevents some same­sex employees from taking advantage of tax benefits that other
employees can take advantage of; same­sex employees cannot use pre­tax salary to pay for healthcoverage of a same­sex spouse, nor can they use flexible savings accounts to pay for child care ofdependents from a same­sex marriage. In all, an employee married to a same­sex spouse will pay$1,069 more in taxes than a colleague married to a different­sex spouse, according to a study of W­2
forms, the brief says.
Federal law also does not allow employees married to same­sex spouses to give spouses access to
COBRA or family medical leave. It prevents same­sex spouses of highly qualified visa recipients toreceive the same type of visa as their spouse; it also prevents these spouses from being the beneficiaryof pension plans.
All in all, "DOMA forces amici to administer dual systems of benefits and payroll, and imposes onthem the cost of the workarounds necessary to protect married colleagues," the brief says.
In the states that allow gay marriage, employers must treat employees with same­sex spouses as single
for purposes of federal tax withholding and workplace benefits that depend on marital status, butmarried for everything else. Many employers thus retain two sets of books to keep track of all thispaperwork.

"For many employers, DOMA does violence to the morale of the institution itself," the brief says.
Many employers have come forth in support of gay marriage before, most notably in November's
elections, when three states ­­ Washington, Maine and Maryland affirmed the right of same­sex couples
to marry. Starbucks, Microsoft and others spoke out in those campaigns.
DOMA is expected to be argued in front of the Supreme Court in the end of March. It concerns Edie
Windsor, who was married to her wife, Thea Speyer, for 44 years. When Speyer died in 2009, thefederal government refused to recognize the marriage and taxed Windsor as if she had not been married
to Speyer. Had the marriage been recognized, Windsor would have been exempt from these taxes,
which amounted to more than $300,000.
In October, the 2nd Circuit struck down DOMA, and in December, the Supreme Court agreed to hear
the case.

Businesses call Defense of Marriage Act
unfairBy ​Beth Healy​| Globe Staff February 28, 2013

Nearly 300 companies and business groups across the country, including many prominent
Massachusetts firms, are asking the US Supreme Court to strike down the Defense of Marriage Act,saying it forces them to discriminate against married gay employees.
A who’s who of corporate America signed on to a friend­of­the­court brief filed Wednesday. The groupof 278 businesses includes the Bay State’s EMC Corp., State Street Corp., Akamai Technologies Inc.,and a number of law firms and health insurers.
“The federal law forces an employer to put its employees in two different castes,” said Sabin Willett, apartner with the Boston law firm Bingham McCutchen, which wrote the brief. “DOMA is bad forbusiness.”
The stand is the latest sign that gay marriage is gaining greater acceptance in mainstream America, just
10 years after Massachusetts became the first state to legalize it.
The Obama administration last week asked the Supreme Court to side with a lower court to strike down
the Defense of Marriage Act — known as ​DOMA — which defines marriage as between one man and
one woman.
That was followed by Wednesday’s filing by businesses, from Wall Street to Silicon Valley, adding
their legal objection to DOMA. The new court brief was the most sweeping of its kind yet, as a major
swath of corporate America stood up to argue that treating married employees differently based onwhether they are gay or straight is unfair and a cost burden.
Nationally, companies that signed the brief included high­tech giants Google Inc. and ​Apple Inc., WallStreet’s Goldman Sachs Group, and the Walt Disney Co.
The group also included Bain & Co., the Boston consulting firm that launched Mitt Romney’s career
before he started Bain Capital. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, opposed gay marriage when
it became legal here in 2004 and opposed it in his campaign for president last year.
“We have always felt that our employees should be ​focused on why we brought them to the company,’’
said Paul T. Dacier, executive vice president and general counsel at EMC, a Hopkinton­based computerstorage company. “We do not want them concerned about their benefits, their marital status, and how
they’re treated.”An amicus — or “friend of the court” — brief is filed by a person or group that has a stake in, andknowledge of, the legal issues at hand.
The filer is not an official party to the case, but is allowed to bring issues to the court’s attention.
Under current law, gay employees who are married must pay taxes on health benefits provided to a
spouse, unlike their straight peers. And they can be subject to a number of other tax and benefit issues
as well, according to the American Benefits Council, which also joined the brief, calling DOMA “anunnecessary and troublesome obstacle.”
The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case of Windsor v. United States on March 27. It started
with a lawsuit brought by a New York woman, Edith Windsor, whose spouse, Thea Spyer, died in
2009, triggering $363,000 in estate taxes that Windsor would not have owed if she had been married toa man.
A lower court ruled in Windsor’s case that DOMA was unconstitutional in prohibiting the federal
government from recognizing the legal marriages of same­sex couples. The businesses that filed thebrief Wednesday are asking the Supreme Court to agree with the lower court, and throw out the law.
They said the law “puts us, as employers, to unnecessary cost and administrative complexity, andregardless of our business or professional judgment forces us to treat one class of our lawfully married
employees differently than another, when our success depends upon the welfare and morale of all
employees.”
In a separate action earlier this week, scores of prominent Republicans said they would file an amicus
brief in a related case, asking the high court to strike down California’s Proposition 8 banning same­sex
marriage. Former Massachusetts governors William Weld, Jane Swift, and Paul Cellucci all signed thatbrief.
The number of businesses supporting an overturn of DOMA has quadrupled since 2011, when Attorney
General Martha Coakley filed an amicus brief on a different gay marriage case. Eastern Bank of Boston
was one of the participants then and joined the latest effort as well.
“We’re trying to protect the rights of our employees,’’ said Richard Holbrook, chief executive ofEastern Bank.
Now, he noted, “It’s a very broad brush of American companies who all have obviously understoodthat there’s some injustice being done that should be corrected.”
The US Chamber of Commerce said it had not filed a brief and had no comment. The Family ResearchCouncil, a Washington group that opposes gay marriage, last month filed amicus briefs in defense of
DOMA.
Tom McClusky, vice president for government ​affairs at the council, said of the brief by the businessinterests: “It’s certainly unfortunate. The premise is that it’s good for business and attracts business tostates. But most of the states that have marriage amendments are also states that are doing rather wellfinancially.”
He added, “You might be attracting some business, but you’re also detracting lots of other business.”
It’s unclear to what extent the Supreme Court will take the view of businesses into account when ithears the case. But Lee Swislow, executive director of the Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders, aBoston group that’s been working on the amicus briefs, said the broad support of companies wasimportant for the justices to see.
“It indicates that support for marriage equality isn’t some out­there kind of idea,” she said. “Thesebusinesses know what we’ve been saying is true — DOMA is bad for people. It’s bad for employees,
it’s bad for business.”
http://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2013/02/28/nearly­businesses­ask­supreme­court­strike­down­defense­marriage­act/KwETbPZkdyVklCvwTu6tmM/story.html

Brief in same-sex marriage cases cite burdens on employers
2/28/2013 By ​Carlyn Kolker(Reuters) ­ A brief filed by employers on Wednesday asking the Supreme Court to strike down thefederal Defense of Marriage Act highlighted administrative burdens caused by the law.
Because same­sex marriage is legal in some states while the Defense of Marriage Act limits marriage toopposite­sex couples, the law creates dual regimes that employers must navigate, according to the brief.
The brief was written by Sabin Willett of the law firm Bingham McCutchen on behalf of companies
including Google Inc, Pfizer Inc and Starbucks Corp. Thomson Reuters, the parent company of Reuters
and Westlaw, was among the signatories.
"Far from creating uniformity, DOMA obliges employers to treat an employee married to someone of
the same sex and an employee married to someone of a different sex unequally," the brief said.
The brief centers on the technical issues faced by employers and their legal, human resource andcompliance managers, rather than on constitutional issues.
The Defense of Marriage Act creates compliance difficulties for employers in the administration ofhealthcare, leaves of absence and retirement benefits, it said.
For example, the act mandates that employers treat health benefits to a same­sex spouse as taxable
income, according to the brief. Payments to health savings accounts or flexible spending accounts are
similarly affected. The result is that tax and wage forms for employees who are married to same­sex
partners are different from forms for employees married to opposite­sex partners.
Under the Defense of Marriage Act, employees married to same­sex partners get different paid andunpaid leave from employees married to opposite­sex partners, and employee retirement benefits are
similarly affected, the brief said.
"These dual regimes have spawned an industry of costly compliance specialists," it said. Companies
must pay attorneys, benefits experts and payroll personnel to sort through and maintain different
regimes, depending on the states where employees reside. They must also rewrite employee forms
according to legal developments in differing states, according to the brief.
'A DISASTER' DEALING WITH DOMA
The patchwork of different tax and healthcare structures exposes companies to potential litigation, thebrief said, because companies are left on their own to sort out different regulatory regimes. It also
affects employee morale, it said.
"HR departments would tell you it is a disaster trying to deal with DOMA when you are a large
employer, because you have these employees who are legally married, but now you've got to put themin a different box for W­2s, for ERISA, for retirement benefits, and it's really vexing," Willett told
Reuters.
Signatories to the brief include an array of law firms, including firms that specialize in defending
corporations in labor and employment cases, such as Seyfarth Shaw, Littler Mendelson and Peabody &Arnold.

The law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe was expected to file a brief on Thursday on behalf of
employers in a related Supreme Court case. That case questions a California law, known as Proposition
8, that bans same­sex marriage in the state.
Joshua Rosenkranz, the author of that brief, told Reuters he had been struck by how far the debate oversame­sex marriage had progressed in the past decade.
"I really wanted to do a brief that would capture that progress, a brief that would demonstrate thatmarriage equality was now a mainstream American issue," he said.
Corporations try to create environments that attract and retain the best talent, and they find it"maddening" that states were undermining them, he said.
Rosenkranz said his brief started out with Apple Inc, Facebook Inc and Nike Inc, and quickly grew.
"My colleagues at Orrick reached out to our clients," he said. "And our clients reached out to theircounterparts at other companies."
The two cases are to be argued before the Supreme Court on March 26 and 27.
(Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Aruna Viswanatha)

Top corporations lobby Supreme Court tosupport gay marriageth
By Lawrence Hurley and Aruna Viswanatha, Reuters. February 27​

WASHINGTON ­­ More than 200 businesses on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to strike
down a federal law that restricts the definition of marriage to heterosexual unions, in one of corporate
America's most prominent efforts to support same­sex marriage.
The companies signed on to a friend­of­the­court brief in Windsor v. United States, a high­profile casechallenging the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). They ranged from technology giants
Microsoft Corp and Google Inc to Wall Street financiers such as Citigroup Inc and Goldman Sachs
Group Inc to vineyards and yogurt makers in California.
Thomson Reuters Corp, which owns the Reuters news agency, also supported the submission.
The companies want the Supreme Court to void a key provision in the federal law that defines marriage
as a union between a man and a woman. They largely stayed away from constitutional arguments
attacking the law and instead focused on the business nuisance the law created.
DOMA forces employers to treat employees with same­sex spouses differently from those with
opposite­sex partners, the companies said, depriving gay employees of certain healthcare andretirement benefits that may be on offer. The law also creates headaches for human resources officials,
they said.
"HR departments would tell you it is a disaster trying to deal with DOMA when you are a large
employer, because you have these employees who are legally married, but now you've got to put themin a different box for W­2s, for ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act), for retirement
benefits, and it's really vexing," said Sabin Willett in an interview. Willett wrote the brief for his law
firm, Bingham McCutchen, which handled the matter pro bono.
Separately, lawyers representing another group of employers, including some of the same companies,
said they planned to file a brief on Thursday in a related case that questions a California law, known as
Proposition 8, banning gay marriage.
The two cases are to be argued before the Supreme Court on March 26 and 27. A decision is expectedby the end of June.

While corporate America has long offered domestic partnership benefits and made efforts to attract gay
employees, the filing seemed to represent a new step in an effort to promote the issue.
"It is old news that big business is friendly to lesbian and gay unions," said Yale law professor William
Eskridge, who has argued on behalf of gay rights. "But there has never been a business brief quite likethis one with so many signatories on such a landmark issue," he said.

A group of prominent Republicans, including former advisers to President George W. Bush, are also
expected to file a brief challenging the California law, adding heft to backers of gay rights.
The arguments appeared directed at Justice Anthony Kennedy, as a moderate and potential swing vote,to show the kind of wide support that exists, Eskridge said.
'HURTING BUSINESS'
The brief grew out of a previous effort to represent business interests in another case challenging the
DOMA law, according to Willett.
That case brought together some 70 companies that felt courts may not have understood the fullbusiness impact of the law.
"When people talk about DOMA, they usually, and rightly so, focus on its impact upon human beings... but people may not realize, and courts may not realize, this thing is hurting business, too," Willett
said.
In the brief filed on Wednesday, the companies argued that DOMA "requires that employers treat one
employee differently from another, when each is married, and each marriage is equally lawful."
DOMA does not create any uniformity nationwide, they said, because 12 states either authorizesame­sex marriage or recognize marriages that have been performed in other states.
That creates a burden for employers, particularly those who do business nationally, they added.
The law also forces companies to discriminate, sometimes in contravention of their own internal
policies and local laws, when dealing with healthcare plans and other benefits, the companies said.
In briefs already filed in support of restricting marriage to heterosexual unions, business interests havenot been represented. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce has not taken a stand on the issue.

The Economic Closet: The Business Case for
Gay Marriage
Posted by ​Amy Davidson​
February 27, 2013​
Three hundred sixty­three thousand and fifty­three dollars was the amount that Edith Windsor wasassessed in federal estate taxes when her wife, Thea Spyer, died in 2009. Zero dollars, everyone agrees,
would have been the amount she owed if the federal government had recognized their marriage, as thestate of New York already did. There are other numbers that are more relevant to their story—like
forty­four, the number of years they spent with each other; or twenty­two, the share of those years
during which Spyer lived with a diagnosis of multiple sclerosis, the disease that eventually killed
her—and that Windsor gave up her own job to nurse her through. There were the numbers Windsor
worked while getting a graduate degree in mathematics in the nineteen­fifties, and those in the earlycomputer codes that she wrote for the Atomic Energy Commission’s UNIVAC and at I.B.M., where
she was, at the time, one of very few women programmers. But the difference between zero and threehundred sixty­three thousand and fifty­three is what gives Windsor standing to ​bring a case challenging
the Defense of Marriage Act​. The Supreme Court will hear her case on March 27th, and, the day
before, it will hear another one challenging Proposition 8, California’s ban on same­sex marriage.
How much does money matter when thinking about same­sex marriage, or about marriage at all? The
essence of the debate—and certainly its emotional heart—lies with words like family and respect,honor and honesty, and, above all, love. But those words, and even more so others—security,protection, sickness and health, home and career—are not divorced from finances. This is particularly
true when any one of them is used in the same sentence as “children.” Another number to add to theequation: eleven hundred and thirty­eight, which is the number of federal laws that rely on a definitionof marriage. Many more of them are about money, in one way or the other, than about love. Nor is theconcern simply that of the family involved: companies have an interest, too, as does the larger businessworld, in not having families live in what might be called an economic closet.
That there is a business case for marriage equality was confirmed this week with the news that at least
sixty major corporations will ​file an amicus curiae brief in support of overturning Prop. 8​—a move,depending on how the Court writes the decision, that could establish a right to same­sex marriage not
only in California but in the country as a whole. (Some leading Republicans are ​also submitting abrief​.) More may sign on before the filing deadline on Thursday. The companies range from Apple to
Xerox, with everyone from Levi Strauss, Cisco, Morgan Stanley, Nike, and Panasonic in between.
Fortune​got a ​
draft of the brief​, which reads in part:By singling out a group for less favorable treatment, Proposition 8 impedes businesses fromachieving the market’s ideal of efficient operations—particularly in recruiting, hiring, andretaining talented people who are in the best position to operate at their highest capacity. Amici
are competing domestically and internationally with companies inside and outside the UnitedStates in places where all couples, regardless of whether they are of the same sex, are afforded
equal access to marriage.
If one believes that protecting children is a priority, then so is same­sex marriage. A third of lesbian
couples and a fifth of gay couples who live together already have children, according to the Census,
and a lack of access to marriage takes both social and economic security away from them. A widow or
widower with a minor child whose income falls below a certain level can get social­security benefits
based on the deceased spouse’s earnings—but not if the spouse is of the same sex. The same is true oftax laws, like the one affecting Windsor, that might cost families their homes. Some opponents ofsame­sex marriage have turned this on its head and wondered if it will cost the government too muchmoney. The answer, according to a ​Congressional Budget Office study​, is that it most likely will not,both because the amounts, though large in the life of, say, a widow with a child, are not so large interms of the federal budget. The government will also make money from things like imposing theincome­tax marriage penalty on more couples, and from some people losing eligibility for benefits
when their combined income is calculated. (There are harder­to­answer questions, like how much it
might save Medicare if, earlier in life, a person had access to preventive care through a spouse’s
insurance.) Marriage equality does not inflate budgets; it removes irrational distortions from them.
And that is why, if one believes in protecting free markets, then same­sex marriage should be a priority,
too. This is the point that the amicus brief made with regard to recruiting. It hurts companies and theeconomy when the choice in taking a job at one firm or the other is not based on its salary offer or abelief in its prospects, but by whether it is based in a state the recognizes the employee’s marriage. It
hurts, too, when a spouse who is a foreign citizen is not welcome here. And—something the corporate
brief also mentions—there is the wedding business to consider, too. Last summer, New York City
estimated that it gained two hundred and fifty­nine million dollars from same­sex marriages in the firstyear that they were legal in the state. “Marriage equality has made our city more open, inclusive, andfree—and it has also helped to create jobs and support our economy,” ​Mayor Bloomberg said​.
But there are less obvious ways that a failure to recognize same­sex marriage can reduce thetransparency that helps the private sector thrive. For example, the Windsor brief notes that DOMA has
the effect of exempting same­sex spouses of politicians and public officials from financial­disclosure
requirements. It also denies them the protection of laws that, for example, make threatening the spouseof a federal agent a crime.
I.B.M. didn’t know it at the time, but it came close to losing Edith Windsor when, as her brief recounts,
it “unwittingly ran afoul” of an executive order that forbade companies with federal contracts fromhaving gay or lesbian employees—the order was issued in 1953, the year before the computer pioneer
Alan Turing, who had faced similar barriers in Great Britain, killed himself by eating ​a poisoned apple​.
Luckily, the F.B.I. didn’t ask Windsor about the women in her life when interviewing her for a security
clearance (to work on that UNIVAC), and I.B.M. didn’t find out, either; she wore a diamond pin, rather
than a ring, as a symbol of her long engagement to Spyer. And then she left the company to care for awoman who, for many years, she could only say was a friend.
Read more:http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/comment/2013/02/the­economic­closet­the­business­case­for­gay­marriage.html#ixzz2NRaENdcm

Mass. Companies Among Those Calling
DOMA ‘Bad For Business’
By ​Curt Nickisch​February 28, 2013
BOSTON — State Street Corp., Eastern Bank and MassMutual Life Insurance are among the
Massachusetts companies joining the challenge of the Defense of Marriage Act, or DOMA, atthe U.S. Supreme Court.
DOMA defines marriage as between one man and one woman.
Lawyer Sabin Willett with the Boston firm Bingham McCutchen wrote the brief arguing that
“DOMA is bad for business” because it imposes unnecessary administrative costs.
“A regime of federal law that requires you to treat one set of married employees differently thananother not only is bad for the employees, it’s bad for the employers,” Willett said.
The Massachusetts companies are filing a legal brief along with hundreds of other big firms
across the country, including Apple, Microsoft, Google, Starbucks and Johnson & Johnson.
The Supreme Court is expected to hear the DOMA challenge next month.

Apple, Google, Facebook Tell Supreme
Court: Gay Marriage Is Good for Business
By ​Marcus Wohlsen​
02.27.13
The biggest tech companies in the world are standing up for same­sex marriage, but not just as a matterof fairness. Apple, Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft are just a few of hundreds of companies
that have signed on to a ​brief​
filed with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that federal same­sex marriage
restrictions hurt their businesses.
In all, 278 companies joined to support the friend­of­the­court filing, among them some of thecountry’s biggest and most visible. Other tech companies listed as backers of the brief include Adobe,
Cisco, eBay, Electronic Arts, Intel, Intuit, Oracle, Twitter and Zynga.
And tech companies aren’t the only ones getting behind the push to overturn the federal Defense of
Marriage Act. Some of the biggest non­tech names include Citigroup, Johnson & Johnson, Goldman
Sachs, Nike, CBS Corp., Starbucks and Disney.
All of the companies signed on to the filing are located or operate in states where same­sex marriages
are legal or recognized, according to the brief. The conflict between those laws and DOMA, which bars
federal recognition of same­sex marriage, needlessly burdens those companies with extra costs andbureaucratic tangles, the filing argues. In effect, DOMA puts the companies in a position that “forces us
to treat one class of our lawfully married employees differently than another, when our success depends
upon the welfare and morale of all employees.”
That morale, the brief goes on to argue, depends upon “a workplace ethos of transparent fairness.”
Specifically, the companies argue federal law forces companies to engage in administrative acrobatics
to offer equal benefits to all employees “to compensate for the discriminatory effects of DOMA,” suchas unequal tax treatment of opposite­sex versus same­sex couples. As a result, keeping morale high andrecruiting new talent — a persistently present issue for tech companies — becomes harder, which thecompanies say affects their bottom lines.
Morale and money aren’t the only issues, however. The companies say that DOMA also forces them tobetray their principles. “DOMA conscripts (companies) to become the face of its mandate that two
separate castes of married persons be identified and separately treated,” the brief complains, even instates, counties and cities that ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation and marital
status.
The filing comes at a pivotal point in the shifting debate over same­sex marriage. Tomorrow is thedeadline to submit friend­of­the­court briefs to the Supreme Court in the push to overturn DOMA andCalifornia’s Proposition 8, which bans same­sex marriage in the state. Yesterday a group of ​prominent
Republicans filed their own brief​
arguing against the same­sex marriage bans — among them

Hewlett­Packard CEO Meg Whitman, whose own company did not join many of its Silicon Valley
rivals in attaching its name to today’s filing.
Not so many years ago, the decision by these popular companies to take a stand on such a divisivesocial issue would have seemed incredibly risky. Even today, Apple, Google, Facebook and the others
have plenty of fans who are no fans of same­sex marriage.
But Stanford University law professor Jane Schacter, who specializes in constitutional andsexual­orientation law, says the landscape has changed as opinion polls begin to show majority support
for same­sex marriage, especially among young people. Schacter believes the companies likely see
support of same­sex marriage as a good marketing move to court the demographic groups they covet
most.
“It’s almost a branding thing (for companies). ‘We’re the future. We’re where things are moving, notwhere they’ve been in the past,’” she says. “I think there is very little for them to lose.”
What’s more, she says the brief could influence the justices’ thinking on the issue. Opposition to thesame­sex marriage bans from such a broad range of institutions signals to the court that the debate overthe issue doesn’t break down along predictably partisan lines.
Ultimately, Schacter says the court has to decide if the government has good reason to discriminate
against one class of people. Vocal, reasoned opposition to the laws from big companies means one lessgood reason in the Supreme Court’s eyes to uphold same­sex marriage bans, she says: “It’s likely tolook to the court more like an issue of prejudice and intolerance.”

Facebook, Apple, Google Back Same­Sex
Marriage in Supreme Court FilingAlex Fitzpatrick​Feb 27, 2013
Facebook​,​
Apple​,​
Google​,​Microsoft​
and ​
eBay​
are among more than 200 companies that filed a brief
Wednesday calling on the Supreme Court to overturn a provision in a federal law that defines marriage
as a union between a man and a woman.
The companies filed the document, known as an amicus curiae or "friend of the court" brief, in the caseagainst the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). They say the law's definition of marriage forces national
companies to discriminate against employees based on their marriage status, sexual orientation andstate of residence.
Differences between DOMA and state laws require discriminating against LGBT employees when it
comes to health insurance and other benefits, argues the companies' brief. That discrimination, it
continues, violates legal requirements and the companies' own policies.
The brief also argues DOMA reduces workplace transparency, hurts the employee­employer
relationship and adds unnecessary financial burden on companies as they navigate the conflicts
between DOMA and various state laws.
Facebook first announced the brief in a post on its recently opened ​LGBTQ@Facebook page​. The fullbrief can be accessed at ​Bingham​.
Many of the same companies are reportedly planning on filing a separate amicus brief in support ofstriking down California's Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage.
The companies involved in that brief will argue Prop 8 sends "an unmistakeable signal that same­sex
couples are in some way inferior to opposite­sex couples, a proposition that is anathema to amici's
commitment to equality and fair treatment to all," according to ​CNN​.
Meg Whitman, current CEO of Hewlitt­Packard and former eBay CEO and California gubernatorial
candidate, recently reversed her personal position on Prop 8 in a blog post.
"I have come to embrace same­sex marriage after a period of careful review and reflection," she wrote
on ​LinkedIn​. "Same­sex couples and their children should have equal access to the benefits ofmarriage."

The Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments on Proposition 8 on March 26 and on DOMA one
day later.