House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi on
Thursday described the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as “definitely
unconstitutional.”
DOMA, the 1996 law which forbids the
federal government from recognizing the legal marriages of gay and
lesbian couples, is in national headlines as the Supreme Court
prepares for next week's oral arguments in a case challenging its
constitutionality.
Pelosi, a Democrat from California,
also accused Republicans of working to undermine the court's
authority to rule on the law.
“Around 2005, the Republicans, who
were in the majority, passed legislation specifically related to
DOMA, which had, as you know, passed some years before, in the 90s,”
Pelosi
told reporters. “But they came up with a specific bill
relating to DOMA that stripped the courts of the right of judicial
review. They said [that] Marbury
v. Madison was wrongly decided, that the courts do not
have right of judicial review, and therefore they were stripping the
courts of judicial review.”
“Why would they do that if they
thought they had a constitutional bill – specifically related to
DOMA?” she asked.