The case brought by Immigration Equality follows numerous other DOMA suits wending their way through the courts on their way to the Supreme Court within the next couple of years.

The quandary facing such couples got national attention in the case of a San Francisco couple, Bradford Wells, a U.S. citizen, and Anthony John Makk, a citizen of Australia. Makk faced deportation but got a reprieve after House minority leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, intervened in their case. Others are not so fortunate.

Another Bay Area couple, Brian Willingham and Alfonso Garcia, have argued that the Obama administration is "still aggressively enforcing DOMA" despite administrative guidance to use "prosecutorial discretion" in enforcement against gay and lesbian bi-national couples. Garcia was brought to the United States as a child and has lived in the Bay Area for 21 years.

That may be changing, however. At a March 22 hearing last month in San Francisco, , Willingham said in an email Monday, "something sort of historic happened. The judge decided to treat us the same as any other married couple in the same situation. As soon as Judge Hoogosian learned that I had filed a green card petition for my husband, and that USCIS was still in the process of reviewing that petition, she decided to postpone the deportation hearing for seven months." The government attorney did not object. If the couple's green card application is not approved, Willingham said they will be asking the government to put the application on hold until DOMA is settled.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle