It was all smiles for attorneys from Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders and from the Massachusetts Attorney General’s office when Federal Judge Joseph L. Tauro issued a ruling yesterday in two lawsuits brought by the GLAD and the state of Massachusetts calling the federal Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional, but other LGBT advocates say the victory is a hollow one, and will probably loose on appeal.

Tauro wrote that not only does the Act violates same-gender couples’ right to equal protection under the law – GLAD’s argument – it also encroaches on a topic that has traditionally been within the purview of individual states to define and regulate, the position taken by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley. To back up his judgment on the issue of state’s rights, Tauro cited the federal government’s long history of not actually doing anything to regulate marriage, even as public debate on interracial marriage issue was raging:

“But even as the debate concerning interracial marriage waxed and waned throughout history, the federal government consistently yielded to marital status determinations established by the states,” Tauro wrote. “That says something. And this court is convinced that the federal government’s long history of acquiescence in this arena indicates that, indeed, the federal government traditionally regarded marital status determinations as the exclusive province of state government.”

(h/t AmericaBlog)

As the lawsuit was challenging a federal law, the Department of Justice defended the law in court. However, a DOJ spokesperson declined to comment on whether or not the Obama Administration wanted to dive into another questionable public-relations move by appealing the ruling while the President is on record supporting the repeal of DOMA and calling DOMA discriminatory.

Several commentators – including the University of Minnesota’s Dale Carpenter (h/t Andrew Sullivan) – say any ruling based on the Tenth Amendment is actually not a very good thing for supporters of same-gender marriage. They point out that a) the ruling’s logic that marriage is not a federal issue could invalidate “wide swaths” of federal power, if applied in other situations; b) it doesn’t help married same-gender couples keep their rights if they move to a state that won’t recognize their marriage; and c) it avoids the stronger argument that discriminatory federal laws have to clear a high bar in order to be permissible.