New York County Surrogate Nora Anderson issued a decision on February 18, 2014, in the pending will contest In the Matter of the Accounting of Martin Ephraim, as Fiduciary of the Deceased Executor, for the Estate of Ronald D. Myers, No. 2006/4109 (N.Y. Surrogate’s Court, N.Y. County), which surprisingly relied on old New York cases to prefer the mother of the decedent over his surviving same-sex partner in distributing disputed assets of the estate, … <Read More>
Colorado Trial Court Rules for Marriage Equality; Another Colorado Trial Court Refuses to Restrain Boulder Clerk
Adams County District Court Judge C. Scott Crabtree ruled on July 9, in Brinkman v. Long, 2014 WL 3408024, that Colorado’s ban on same-sex marriage violates the 14th Amendment. However, Judge Crabtree stayed his ruling pending appeal, and did not issue an injunction. The next day, July 10, Boulder County District Judge Andrew Hartman rejected an attempt by Attorney General John Suthers to get the court to stop Boulder County Clerk Hillary Hall from issuing … <Read More>
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Divided Over Strict Liability in Statutory Rape Cases
In Fleming v. State of Texas, 2014 Tex. Crim. App. LEXIS 879 (June 18, 2014), nine members of the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals fractured over whether the defendant in a statutory rape case could argue in defense that he believed in good faith that his sexual partner was not underage. In common with most states, Texas has traditionally treated statutory rape as a strict liability offense: the prosecutor need only prove that the victim … <Read More>
Better Late Than Never? Alabama Appeals Court Nixes Consensual Sodomy Conviction
In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that state laws making it a crime for two men or two women to have consensual sex violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution by impairing individual liberty without adequate justification. At the time there were many states, especially in the southeast, that continued to treat such conduct as a crime, and they did not rush to take these unconstitutional laws off the books. … <Read More>
Chelsea Opera’s Production of Aaron Copland’s “The Tender Land”
Chelsea Opera presented two performances of Aaron Copland’s opera, “The Tender Land,” at St. Pete Church on West 20th Street in… of course… Chelsea (Manhattan). I attended the second performance, a matinee on June 14.
Copland collaborated with several people on this piece, but ultimately the librettist was identified as Horace Everett. It was written to be a television production, but when that fell through he adapted it for opera house presentation and the New … <Read More>
Iowa Supreme Court Reinterprets HIV Exposure Statute to Reflect Current Science
In a triumph for science and common sense, the Iowa Supreme Court has voted in Rhoades v. State, No. 12-0180, to reinterpret that state’s HIV exposure statute to bring it into line with the current scientific evidence about HIV transmission, vacating the conviction of Nick Rhoades, who had originally been sentenced to up to 25 years in prison because he hadn’t disclosed his HIV status to a partner before engaging in sex. The June 13 … <Read More>
Cautionary Tale: Same-Sex Couples That Own Property Need to Take Steps to Protect Each Other
The Tax Court of New Jersey issued a ruling on June 5 in Estate of Frappolli v. Director, Division of Taxation, 2014 Westlaw 2567138, with a strong cautionary note for same-sex couples who jointly own their homes. Formalize your status if you can!
Marie Frappolli and Dorothea Angelou became partners as students and considered themselves partners for many decades until Frappolli died in 2009. Frappolli bought a house in Avalon, NJ, in her own name … <Read More>
U.S. Veterans’ Domestic Partners and Civil Union Partners Eligible for Burial Benefits
In new rules published in the Federal Register on June 6, the Department of Veterans Affairs says that it will treat surviving domestic partners and civil union partners of veterans the same as surviving spouses. The rules uses the terminology “survivor of a legal union” and requires that the union have been documented under state law, so presumably it applies only to people in state-registered domestic partnerships and civil unions. This would, apparently, not extend … <Read More>
The State of Play Now on Marriage Equality
Yesterday at Cornell University I participated on a Reunion Panel co-sponsored by the CU Gay & Lesbian Alumni Association (CUGALA) and the Law School, titled “One Year Later: U.S. Law and Politics in the Post-DOMA World.” My assigned task on the panel was to discuss how the response to U.S. v. Windsor has played out over the ensuing 11 months. My prepared text is in two parts: a chronology of events, and a discussion of … <Read More>
Wisconsin Becomes 20th Marriage Equality State – At Least for Now
On June 6 Senior U.S. District Judge Barbara B. Crabb issued her decision in Wolf v. Walker, granting summary judgment to plaintiffs challenging Wisconsin’s constitutional and statutory ban on same-sex marriages in a suit filed in February by the American Civil Liberties Union. Because some of the eight plaintiff couples were already married elsewhere, her decision covered both the right to marry and the right to recognition of existing marriages. County clerks in Milwaukee and … <Read More>