Helen Thornton is suing the Social Security Administration for the survivor’s benefits that she would be able to claim if her partner of 27 years had not died before same-sex couples in their home state of Washington could marry.
Thornton and Marge Brown had begun a committed relationship in 1979, when they were 23, built a life together, and raised a son. They did a second-parent adoption and are both on his birth certificate. When Brown was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, Thornton was her caregiver during the three years before Brown’s death in 2006.
Thornton, now 63, is semi-retired and takes care of animals to supplement her own monthly Social Security income. In 2015, she had applied for survivor’s benefits, just before she turned 60 and would have been otherwise eligible to receive those benefits based on Brown’s work record. The Social Security Administration (SSA), however, denied her application, saying that the two women would have to have been legally married at the time “and be living in a State that recognizes the same-sex relationship,” according to court filings. SSA rules generally requires couples to be married for at least nine months before one spouse dies in order for the other to qualify for survivor’s benefits. The State of Washington did not allow same-sex couples to marry until 2012, though.
Today, with the help of Lambda Legal, Thornton sued the SSA. Their complaint cites the landmark 2013 and 2015 marriage equality cases that came before the U.S. Supreme Court, and asserts, “SSA’s actions violate the holdings of Obergefell, Windsor, and similar lower court decisions.” It argues:
Survivor’s benefits are as important to surviving same-sex partners who would have married their loved ones but for discriminatory marriage laws, as they are to surviving different-sex spouses who had the opportunity to marry their loved ones. Both groups are similarly situated in every relevant respect. The only distinction between them is the unconstitutional barrier to marriage faced by the same-sex partners.
The financial impact is not just of the survivor’s benefits themselves, but how they would have affected Thornton’s own benefits. Let’s get into the financial details for a moment, since this is important for many of us to understand. The complaint explains:
Because Ms. Thornton was deemed ineligible for spousal survivor benefits, she began collecting social security benefits at age 62 based on her own work record. Had she been eligible for survivor’s benefits, she would have been able to delay collecting benefits based on her own work record until age 66 or later. Receiving social security benefits based on her own record at the early retirement age of 62 reduces Ms. Thornton’s retirement benefits throughout her life…. The denial of survivor’s benefits has had a significant negative impact on Ms. Thornton’s quality of life and stretched finances.
SSA’s actions violate Thornton’s constitutional right to equal protection and due process, the complaint argues. They ask the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington to grant Thornton survivor’s benefits, “including a recalculation of benefits to the extent necessary to afford complete relief.”
Let’s hope the Court agrees that the SSA’s actions were unconstitutional and grants this widowed spouse and mother her due.
