SAGE and Aging Organizations Brief Supreme Court on Why Elders Need Marriage Equality
SAGE, with the assistance of Jack Nadler as the lead lawyer from the firm Squire Patton Boggs, recently filed an amicus brief (friend of the court brief) related to the upcoming marriage cases that the Supreme Court will hear on April 28, 2015. SAGE filed the brief with the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, Justice in Aging, National Hispanic Council on Aging, and the American Society on Aging.
In this brief, SAGE made four major arguments:
- Excluding same-sex couples from marriage deprives them of access to federal, state, and private benefits that are especially important for older adults;
- denial of the right to marry deprives older same-sex couples of the intangible benefits that marriage provides to older different sex couples;
- allowing older different sex couples to marry despite being non-procreative, while forbidding older same-sex couples from marrying because they are non-procreative, is self-evidently irrational; and
- older same-sex couples should not have to wait any longer to enjoy the benefits of marriage.
Our hope is that our unique aging lens will provide a compelling view of marriage to the justices – and that perhaps – our brief will make a difference in bringing us closer to the day when same-sex couples can age with access to benefits, services, and supports, equal to their different sex counterparts.
Read a copy of the brief and our press release on the SAGE site.
This post was written by Aaron Tax, SAGE’s Director of Federal Relations.
