the Cote-Whitacre lawsuit hearing was today (prerun to challenging DOMA)

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2005/10/06/court_to_hear_lawsuit_over_nonresident_gay_marriages/

High court hears lawsuit over nonresident gay marriages

By Denise Lavoie, Associated Press Writer  |  October 6, 2005

BOSTON --The state's highest court heard arguments Thursday in a lawsuit seeking to overturn the residency requirement for gay couples who want to get married in Massachusetts.

A lawyer for eight gay couples told the Supreme Judicial Court that a state law governing the issuance of marriage licenses is being used to discriminate against gay couples from other states.

The 1913 law bars licenses from being issued to couples if the union would not be recognized in their home state. Since Massachusetts is the only U.S. state that allows gays to marry, it has been used to bar nonresident same-sex couples from marrying here.

<....>

Other states are closely watching the case because if the court strikes down the law, same-sex couples nationwide could come here to wed and demand marriage rights in their home states.

The '1913 law' under dispute is essentially state-to-state level imposition of a bar or bars to marriage that does what DOMA does on a federal level. The overall argument to overturn the '1913 law' as unconstitutional is essentially identical to the one to muster against DOMA. In essence, the group of lawyers (principally GLAD's Mary Bonauto and Michele Granda) who successfully argued the case for gay marriage legalization in Massachusetts (the Goodridge suit) are laying the groundwork for a successful federal lawsuit to overturn DOMA.

Having looked the briefs and some of the letters of amicus- the SJC actually solicited most of the latter- and the temperature of things here in Mass. and a bit of feel for the SJC on the topical area, my feel of it has been 60/40 odds of a verdict in favor of plaintiffs.

I'd guess that GLAD is not running terribly short on money these days, but it can't hurt to show them some financial appreciation for unflinchingly leading the court battles and having worked out how to win them on the merits.
http://www.glad.org/