Three of Seattle’s largest companies — Amazon.com, Microsoft and Starbucks — are joining forces with more than 200 other businesses to urge the U.S. Supreme court to strike down language that restricts the definition of marriage to only heterosexual couples.
Reuters reports that lawyers representing the companies, also including Google, Pfizer and Aetna, plan to file a brief in a case related to the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). An attorney for the companies wrote that DOMA “requires that employers treat one employee differently from another, when each is married, and each marriage is equally lawful.”
Meanwhile, The New York Times reports that more than two dozen Republicans plan to file a brief this week supporting same-sex marriage as part of a lawsuit to overturn Proposition 8, a California ballot initiative that bars same-sex marriage.
Amazon.com earlier this month unveiled an ad for its Kindle e-reader device that features a gay married couple, while founder Jeff Bezos last summer donated $2.5 million to a Washington state coalition supporting Referendum 74. That measure was approved on the November ballot and upheld the state law protecting the rights of same-sex couples to marry.
More on the DOMA case on the Supreme Court’s Web site
