Are You Sure About Your Position On This One, Social Security?
From the
Providence Journal:
A Warwick widow has filed a lawsuit against the Social Security
Administration accusing the federal agency of wrongfully denying her
survivor benefits after she lost her 56-year-old wife to cancer in 2011.
The
plaintiff, Deborah Tevyaw, 58, was married to her late wife, Patricia
Baker, in 2005 in Massachusetts, but the federal agency says the
relationship ended in 2011, before Governor Chafee ordered state
agencies to recognize same-sex marriage in May 2012, according to the
lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court.
Rhode Island has
recognized out-of-state marriages, including marriages in Massachusetts,
since at least 1904, and in 2007 the state’s attorney general issued an
opinion stating that same-sex marriages from other states “must be
recognized under principles of comity and full faith and credit,” says
the complaint.
In July this year, Governor Chafee wrote the acting
commissioner of the Social Security Administration, Carolyn W. Colvin,
to express his concern that the federal agency had misinterpreted the
2012 date as the date when Rhode Island first recognized out-of-state
same-sex marriages, the complaint says.
So Governer Chafee "ordered" state agencies to recognize same-sex marriage, without the benefit of legislation? Guess that could be a sticking point, but only because I try to think logically. Anyway, such a decree certainly would have no authority over the Social Security Administration, a federal agency.
ReplyDeleteAs of September 30, Social Security corrected the Rhode Island reference in POMS for "Date Same-Sex Marriages from Any Other State Were Recognized" to February 20, 2007.
ReplyDelete