Sen. Hatch, other leaders defend DOMA with friend-of-the-court brief

The Meese/Ashcroft brief focused on Attorney General Eric Holder and the Obama administration's February 2011 refusal to defend DOMA. In the brief, Meese and Ashcroft stated that the administration's change of position marks "an unprecedented and ill-advised departure from over two centuries of executive branch practice."

On June 6, a federal judge in Manhattan struck down a key component of the law, just days after a federal appeals court in Boston found the law's denial of federal benefits to same-sex couples unconstitutional. Similar rulings were made by a federal judge in 2010 and two federal judges in California this year, the Boston Globe reported.

An effort to speed up an appeals court review of DOMA was denied at the end of May, with the Ninth Circuit Court rejecting the Obama administration's effort to send the case to an 11-judge en banc court, bypassing a three-judge panel, according to the SCOTUS blog.

The Ninth Circuit Court will hear oral arguments in a DOMA challenge in September.