Summary

The Defense of Marriage Act, which became law in 1996, defines "marriage" as a "legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife"; similarly, it defines "spouse" as "a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." The legislation potentially affects the interpretation of a wide variety of federal laws in which marital status is a factor. This report identifies federal laws in which benefits, rights, and privileges are contingent on marital status. GAO divides its discussion into 13 categories: social security, housing, and food stamps; veterans' benefits; taxation; federal civilian and military service benefits; employment benefits; immigration, naturalization, and aliens; Indians; trade, commerce, and intellectual property; financial disclosure and conflict of interest; crimes and family violence; loans, guarantees, and payments in agriculture; federal natural resources; and miscellaneous laws.

GAO found that: (1) it conducted searches for various words or word stems chosen to elicit marital status, in several electronic databases that contain the text of federal laws; (2) this collection of laws is as complete and representative as can be produced by a global electronic search of the kind GAO conducted; (3) its data include only laws classified to the United States Code; and (4) no conclusions can be drawn from its identification of a law as one in which marital status is a factor, concerning the effect of the law on married people versus single people.