A House Democratic leader, pushing to end the chamber’s costly legal support of the controversial Defense of Marriage Act, Tuesday urged diverting that money to the Justice Department probe of the Florida shooting of Trayvon Martin that has become a civil rights cause.
“We can spend some of that money and address ourselves to the issue in Florida where we could do some investigation and see if there are civil rights violations,” said Rep. Mike Honda, D-Calif., and a senior Democratic whip team member.
At an appropriations subcommittee hearing Tuesday, Honda called on the GOP leadership to stop defending DOMA because the White House in February 2011 said it would stop defending the law, which Attorney General Eric Holder said violated the Constitution. The Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on the law that defines marriage as the legal union of one man and one woman.
When Holder made his surprise decision, House leaders ordered their lawyers to defend the law on their own. The House is planning to spend up to $1.5 million to defend the law in nearly a dozen cases. Honda wants to ship that money to the Martin case, claiming that the House doesn’t have to defend all of the legal challenges to DOMA, just a few to make its point. “It’s cover your ass,” he said.
Ohio Republican Rep. Steven LaTourette, however, said that the House has to defend its law because Holder won’t. “It’s nuts,” said LaTourette, who slammed Holder for cherry-picking laws he wants to enforce, even though “Bill Clinton signed DOMA and it’s the law of the land.”
After Honda suggested using DOMA money in the Florida murder probe, LaTourette came up with an idea on who should pay the House’s $1.5 million legal tab: Holder’s justice department. “It’s unfair that we should be paying the all the money,” said the lawmaker, who pledged to seek language to take money from Justice, a plan Honda said he would fight.
Many legal experts believe that DOMA will end up before the Supreme Court, a situation House General Counsel Kerry Kircher said will eventually settle the issue. “The name of the game is to get the case before the Supreme Court,” he said.
