Bonauto is a civil rights lawyer whose powerful arguments and long-term legal strategies have led to historic strides in the effort to achieve marriage equality for same-sex couples across the United States. The Civil Rights Project Director at Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) since 1990, much of her early work focused on adoption and parenting, censorship, hate crimes, and discrimination in jobs and public accommodations.
Mindful of the risks of loss and political backlash when social reform litigation advances ahead of public understanding, Bonauto and her GLAD colleagues initially pursued an incremental, state-based strategy to secure government marriage licenses for same-sex couples in the New England states. Bonauto and Vermont colleagues formed a critical partnership in 1997, which is widely acknowledged as a pivotal time and place to challenge a state's exclusion of gay and lesbian couples from marriage. The Vermont Supreme Court's ruling in Baker v. Vermont (1999) was the first to hold that same-sex couples must be provided all of the same protections and obligations provided to married couples, and the state legislature established the first civil union law in the nation in 2000 to comply with that ruling. GLAD's subsequent filing of Goodridge v. Department of Public Health in Massachusetts, relying again on state constitutional guarantees of equality and liberty, resulted in the 2003 landmark decision that made that state the first to extend marriage equality to same-sex couples. Bonauto's constitutional arguments in Goodridge articulated the breadth of the practical and social harms imposed by the state's exclusion on real families and their children. In defending the marriage ruling from attempts to substitute civil unions, she drew on painful lessons from our nation's past, most notably the history of unjust "separate but equal" doctrines as substitutes for racial and gender equality, and the Massachusetts high court was the first to reject civil unions as a substitute for marriage. The Goodridge ruling, the transformative effect of same-sex couples marrying on the public's views, and subsequent legal (in Connecticut), legislative (in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire), and ballot-based (in Maine) victories all provided a solid foundation and roadmap for future strategies across the nation, including at the federal level.
In 2009, Bonauto led a team from GLAD and private law firms in the first strategic challenge to section three of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and argued that the federal government's non-recognition of the lawful and rapidly growing number of marriages unconstitutionally denied same-sex couples more than 1,000 federal protections and obligations usually available to married persons. Her case--Gill v. Office of Personnel Management--provided the first federal court wins in challenges to DOMA (in 2010 and 2012 rulings), and served as an important model for United States v. Windsor, the landmark case that ultimately resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court striking down DOMA in 2013 and on which she served as a strategist and external coordinator of friend-of-the-court briefs. In the name of equal treatment and dignity for all people, and in concert with other litigators and advocates across the country, Bonauto is breaking down legal barriers based on sexual orientation and influencing debates about the relationship between the law and momentous social change more broadly.
Mary L. Bonauto received a B.A. (1983) from Hamilton College and a J.D. (1987) from Northeastern University School of Law. She has been the Civil Rights Project Director at the Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) since 1990. Since 2013, she has been the Shikes Fellow in Civil Liberties and Civil Rights and Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.This is amazing news. Two other openly LGBT people also won MacArthur Genius grants this year: Alison Bechdel, the creator of the comic strip "Dykes To Watch Out For" and Samuel Hunter, a playwright.
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| Mary Bonauto of GLAD is viewed by some as the lawyer most responsible for the current state of marriage equality in America |
Ten years after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ordered that the state become the first in the country to allow same-sex couples to marry, the once-feared concept has gained mainstream popular support, is recognized by the federal government, and is now the reality in 15 states and Washington, D.C.
Without Mary Bonauto, however, marriage equality might never have happened.
The lawyer brought marriage equality cases in Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. She argued the case to the justices in Massachusetts who brought marriage equality to the United States. She won the first decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act’s federal definition of marriage, and the first appellate decision too — a ruling that forced the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court earlier this year. If there’s been a big moment in marriage equality’s long march to reality, Bonauto was probably there.
And it’s no secret either: The movement’s other leading lawyers openly credit Bonauto for making the success possible.
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After losing at trial, the case advanced to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, where Bonauto argued for legal marriage equality on March 4, 2003.
“Before the argument, I went up to this … law library that I used to go to all the time,” she says. “I just went in there and I was just trying to steel myself, thinking, Mary, you know, you are right. You’re right. This is correct. You are on the right side here.”
Bonauto had just 15 minutes before the court.
“I think the first question was, ‘Why should we do something no one else has ever done?’ — which is a fair question, and I said, ‘Because marriage is a fundamental right, [this is] sexual orientation [discrimination], and this is the right thing to do.’”
The court agreed.
“The Massachusetts Constitution affirms the dignity and equality of all individuals,” Chief Justice Margaret Marshall wrote in the court’s landmark decision, issued on Nov. 18, 2003. “It forbids the creation of second-class citizens.” The government, the court held, “has failed to identify any constitutionally adequate reason for denying civil marriage to same-sex couples.”Happy Anniversary, Massachusetts!
“Solely because of DOMA and its unconstitutional discrimination against same-sex couples,” the lawsuit states, “these Plaintiffs are being denied the immigration rights afforded to other similarly situated binational couples.” Were the Plaintiffs opposite-sex couples, the suit says, “the federal government would recognize the foreign spouse as an ‘immediate relative’ of a United States citizen, thereby allowing the American spouse to petition for an immigrant visa for the foreign spouse, and place [them] on the path to lawful permanent residence and citizenship.”
The five couples named in today’s suit are:
- Edwin Blesch and his South African spouse, Tim Smulian
. Edwin and Tim, who have been together for more than 13 years, were married in South Africa in August 2007. While their marriage is honored by Edwin’s home state of New York, their green card petition was denied on March 14, 2012. They reside in Orient, New York.
- Frances Herbert and her spouse, Takako Ueda, who is originally from Japan
. Frances and Takako, who have known each other for 22 years, were married in April 2011. Their petition for a green card was denied on December 1, 2011. They reside in Dummerston, Vermont.
- Heather Morgan and her spouse, Maria del Mar Verdugo, a native of Spain
. Heather and Mar have known each other for 14 years. They were married, in New York, in August 2011 and have a pending green card petition, which is expected to be denied. They reside in New York City.
- Santiago Ortiz and his spouse, Pablo Garcia, a native of Venezuela
. Santiago, a Puerto Rican American, met Pablo in 1991 and registered as domestic partners in 1993. In May 2011, they were married in Connecticut. The couple have filed a green card petition, which is expected to be denied. They reside in Elmhurst, New YorkThe plaintiffs in the suit include a retired professor of English at a New York college (Blesch); a home elder-care provider (Herbert); a marketing director for a global non-profit organization (Morgan); a retired school psychologist (Ortiz); and two doctors of immunology (Ryan and Truman).
- Kelli Ryan and her spouse, Lucy Truman, a native of the United Kingdom
. Kelli and Lucy have been a couple for more than 11 years and entered into a civil union in July 2006. They were married in March 2010 in Connecticut. Their petition for a green card was denied on March 27, 2012. They reside in Sandy Hook, Connecticut.
“The families in today’s lawsuit meet every qualification for immigration benefits, with the sole exception that they happen to be lesbian or gay,” said Rachel B. Tiven, Esq., executive director of Immigration Equality. “Solely because of their sexual orientation, they have been singled out, under federal law, for discrimination and separation. That’s not only unconscionable; it is unconstitutional. We know DOMA cannot withstand careful review, and we know we will prevail on their behalf.”
Immigration Equality is widely recognized as the country’s premiere national organization providing legal counsel to LGBT immigrant families. In 2011, the organization fielded 1,431 legal inquiries from binational couples like those in the suit filed today, a 141% increase over the previous year. A recent analysis from the Williams Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles estimated 36,000 couples - and the nearly 25,000 children being raised by them - are impacted by the United States’ refusal to recognize lesbian and gay relationships for immigration purposes.
