Biden Administration Is Paying Out Thousands to Victims of Anti-Gay Discrimination

[Nevilledog]

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Tweet text:

Mark Joseph Stern
@mjs_DC
THREAD: Thousands of gay elders who were unlawfully denied the right to marry are suddenly eligible for millions of dollars (cumulatively) in @SocialSecurity survivor's benefits. This is excellent news.

The problem? Most of them have no idea. (1/8)

slate.com
The Biden Administration Is Paying Out Thousands to Victims of Anti-Gay Discrimination
Most would-be beneficiaries don't even know they're eligible.
8:08 AM · Feb 1, 2022

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2022/01/social-security-survivors-benefits-biden-marriage.html

It sounds almost like a scam, or a very aggressive legal advertisement: Gay? Discriminated against? You—yes, you!—may be eligible to collect a small fortune from the federal government today.

But it’s no scam. The Biden administration is paying out substantial sums of money to the surviving partners of same-sex couples who were denied the right to marry. No one knows exactly how many people are eligible, though the best estimate reaches into the thousands (at a minimum), and the pot of money stretches into the millions. Unfortunately, few of these individuals know they’re entitled to these payouts, and many are elders of advanced age. So LGBTQ groups are in a race against time to identify and assist this population in vindicating their constitutional rights before it’s too late.

Lambda Legal, the organization leading this campaign, laid the groundwork in two lawsuits filed during Donald Trump’s presidency. Both challenged the Social Security Administration’s denial of survivor’s benefits to individuals affected by same-sex marriage bans, which have been unenforceable since the Supreme Court found them unconstitutional in 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges. The first suit was filed on behalf of widows and widowers who could never marry because their same-sex partners died before same-sex marriages were legalized. The second was filed on behalf of widows and widowers who were married for less than nine months before their same-sex partner died. Typically, survivor’s benefits are only available if the marriage lasted more than nine months. But if an unconstitutional law prevented the couple from marrying until the end of one partner’s life, Lambda argued, the government had an obligation to alter this rule.

In each case, a federal judge agreed that the denial of survivors’ benefits violated the Constitution. These judges ordered immediate payouts to the individual plaintiffs and certified nationwide class actions on behalf of every other LGBTQ person injured by this exclusionary policy. Predictably, the Trump administration dragged its feet in paying out benefits to the plaintiffs and appealed the class actions, attempting to quash them. (Scholars of the 2020 election will be interested to know that Jeffrey Bossert Clark led the appeal just weeks before plotting a coup at the Justice Department.)

*snip*

[Cha]

1. Wow.. this is Excellent News!

Rt TY & the Biden Admin!

[Budi]

2. Thank you President Biden & to the efforts of Lambda Legal,

[Solly Mack]

3. K&R

[calimary]

4. Justice at last.

Something nice to wake up to, this rainy morning (although I happen to LOVE rainy mornings!).