Bad Timing, Alberto: BIA Confirms Immigration Benefits for Same-Sex Spouses after U.S. v. Windsor

"Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, along with an immigration attorney, David Strange, published an Op Ed in the New York Times entitled What the Court Didn’t Say on July 17, 2013.  They muddy the waters by contending that despite the recent Supreme Court decision in United States v. Windsor, 133 S. Ct. 2675 (2013) which struck down section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as unconstitutional, it is not clear whether same sex spouses may be entitled to immigration benefits as Congress always intended spouses to be of the opposite sex under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). ... Ironically, the publication of the essay coincided with the issuance of Matter of Zeleniak, 26 I&N Dec. 158 (BIA 2013) by the Board of Immigration Appeals on the same day, which held that United States v. Windsor was applicable to non-citizen same sex spouses seeking immigration benefits. ... While Zeleniak has clearly interpreted “spouse” to mean someone of the same sex or opposite sex, so long as the marriage was valid in the place where it was celebrated, Gonzales and Strange still argue that there is sufficient legal ambiguity in the definition of spouse in the INA.  They cite a 1982 case, Adams v. Howerton, 673 F.2d 1036 (9^th Cir. 1982) where the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that Congress only intended to define a citizen’s spouse as a person of the opposite sex in the INA. ... Whatever reliance that Gonzales and Strange may have placed in Adams v. Howerton, it may no longer have any force after Zeleniak since Zeleniak has overruled Adams v. Howerton.  How can a lowly decision of the BIA overrule a decision of the lofty Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals?  Under the oft-quoted Chevron doctrine that the Supreme Court announced in Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 US 837(1984), federal courts will pay deference to the regulatory interpretation of the agency charged with executing the laws of the United States when there is ambiguity in the statute. The courts will intrude only when the agency’s interpretation is manifestly irrational or clearly erroneous.  Similarly, the Supreme Court in Nat’l Cable & Telecomm. Ass’n v. Brand X Internet Servs., 545 US 967 ( 2005),while affirming Chevron, held that, if there is an ambiguous statute requiring agency deference under Chevron, the agency’s understanding will also trump a judicial exegesis of the same statute.  Congress had delegated to the legacy INS, and now to the DHS (and to the EOIR), the authority to unpack the meaning of the INA. ... Just the same way, the judicial emasculation of DOMA supported by the ready cooperation of the BIA, Attorney General Holder and Secretary Napolitano did not happen in a vacuum but, rather, emerged out of a societal sea change on marriage equality that has finally found legal expression.  This is as is it should be for the meaning of America has always changed as Americans themselves have changed.  The great American poet of the anti-slavery movement James Russell Lowell once famously remarked that “Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide.”  Mr. Attorney General, when it comes to the cause of marriage equality, America has made its decision." - Gary Endelman and Cyrus D. Mehta, July 21, 2013.