DOMA: House Republicans Poised To Spend $3 Million On Legal Defense

Source: Huffington Post

House Republican leaders have signed on to spend up to $3 million to keep defending the Defense of Marriage Act in court, according to a copy of their newly revised legal contract obtained by The Huffington Post.

House Republican leaders took over the legal defense of DOMA in the spring of 2011, when Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Obama administration would no longer defend it on the grounds that they found it unconstitutional. House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and other GOP leaders hired attorneys at the law firm Bancroft LLC to represent the House in court cases involving the federal ban on gay marriage -- all with taxpayer dollars.

On Jan. 4, Rep. Candice Miller (R-Mich.), who chairs the House Administration Committee, signed a revised contract with Bancroft LLC that increases the spending cap to $3 million to allow Bancroft attorneys to keep defending DOMA in various court cases. The revised contract also bears the signatures of Bancroft partner Paul Clement and Kerry Kircher, general counsel for the House of Representatives.

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The revised contract comes on the heels of House Republican leaders inserting language into the rules package for the 113th Congress that authorizes the House legal team to keep paying outside counsel to defend DOMA. The rules package also states that the House legal team continues to "speak for" all House members in its defense of DOMA -- language that infuriated Democrats opposed to the matter. All but one Republican, Rep. Walter Jones (N.C.), voted to pass the rules package, effectively endorsing the DOMA language. But a Jones spokesman told The Huffington Post that Jones' opposition wasn't DOMA-related.

Read more: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/15/doma-republicans_n_2479666.html?ir=Gay+Voices&ref=topbar