This is part 4 of 4 of my candid conversation with Pennsylvania
Attorney General Kathleen Kane.
Part 1 was posted on Tuesday,
Part 2 on Wednesday and
part 3 yesterday.
There was a recent decision issued by Judge Jones in the
Eastern District of Pennsylvania striking down Pennsylvania's
Defense of Marriage Act or DOMA. Your office made a decision
not to defend that lawsuit and referred it to the Governor's
General Counsel. What was the basis for that decision?
As lawyers we have to operate under the rules of professional
conduct and where I am discharged with the duties of representing
the Governor, being his lawyer and the Secretary of health, being
his lawyer, in a court of law, I was bound by my ethics, by the
ethical rules, to delegate that case to another lawyer because the
Governor and I and the Secretary of Health and I had a fundamental
difference and that fundamental difference was the basis of the
lawsuit. I believed DOMA to be