Cardona v. Shinseki

Cardona v. Shinseki
Cardona v. Shinseki
Court	United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims
Full case name	Carmen J. Cardona,; Appellant,; v.; Eric K. Shinseki,; Appellee.
Citation	CAVC Case Number 11-3083
Case history
Appealed from	Board of Veterans' Appeals Decision, Docket Number 11-01 921 (August 30, 2011)
Related actions	Gill v. Office of Personnel Management and; Massachusetts v. United States Department of Health and Human Services (1st Cir.); United States v. Windsor (U.S. Sup. Ct.); Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management (2nd Cir.); Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management (9th Cir.);
Court membership
Judge sitting	Bruce E. Kasold
Keywords
	Defense of Marriage Act, Fifth Amendment, Equal protection, Tenth Amendment, Bill of Attainder, Same-sex marriage

Cardona v. Shinseki was an appeal brought in the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims (CAVC) of a decision by the Board of Veterans' Appeals upholding the denial of service-connected disability benefits for the dependent wife of a female veteran. The United States Department of Veterans Affairs denied the disability benefits based on the definition of "spouse" as "a person of the opposite sex" under federal statute. On March 11, 2014, the CAVC dismissed the case as moot after the Secretary of Veterans Affairs advised the Court that he would neither defend nor enforce the federal statute. Cardona subsequently received full payment of her spousal benefits, retroactive to her date of application.