The latest rumbling out of California was no earthquake. It was federal judge ruling that the federal government couldn’t deny health coverage and other benefits to the same-sex spouse of an employee.

Here, in part, is what the judge wrote in his ruling:

“Because there is no rational basis for denying benefits to the same-sex spouses of employees while granting them to the opposite-sex spouses, I conclude that the application of [federal statutes] so as to reach that result is unconstitutional. The denial of federal benefits to same-sex spouses cannot be justified simply by a distaste for or disapproval of same-sex marriage or a desire to deprive same-sex spouses of benefits available to other spouses in order to discourage them from exercising a legal right afforded them by a state.”

The ruling flies in the face of the Defense of Marriage Act and various federal regulations that mandate the marriage is defined as a union between people of the opposite sex.

The male employee married another man during the brief period in which California had legalized same-sex marriages — which is on hold since the passage of Proposition 8 in November 2008.

Tags: benefits, California, health coverage, same-sex marriage