In striking down the Defense of Marriage Act's exclusion of same-sex marriages from recognition under federal law, the U.S. Supreme Court set in motion a wave of needed revisions to employers' group benefit plans.

Prior to the high court's historic ruling last week, Section 3 of DOMA denied gay and lesbian couples the same rights and benefits afforded to opposite-sex married couples under more than 1,000 federal laws, including several statutes mandating certain employment-related benefits, experts said.

With Section 3 invalidated, experts said those benefits — such as continuing health care coverage for workers and their families under COBRA and guaranteed leave for family and medical emergencies under the Family and Medical Leave Act — will need to be made available to same-sex and opposite-sex married couples in equal measure.

For employers already voluntarily offering group health and retirement benefits to their employees' same-sex partners, experts say the Supreme Court's ruling should provide some degree of administrative relief by ending the Internal Revenue Service's disparate taxation of those benefits.

“Obviously, this is very employee-friendly, as it will save some employees thousands of dollars in taxes each year,” said Todd Solomon, a Chicago-based partner at McDermott Will & Emery L.L.P. “But it's also employer-friendly, because it takes a good bit of work to impute income and tax a benefit properly.”

Less clear is the full extent to which employers' obligations to same-sex spouses under group health and retirement benefit plans governed by the Employee Retirement Income Security Act and other federal laws need to expand to comply with the Supreme Court's ruling, experts say.

Certain retirement benefits governed by ERISA that specifically provide spousal rights and responsibilities under employers' ERISA-governed retirement plans — such as rules governing joint and survivor annuities, hardship distributions and mandatory spousal consent — most likely will be extended to include valid same-sex spouses, experts said.

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However, relevant agencies including the Internal Revenue Service and U.S. Department of Labor have yet to comment publicly on the ruling, let alone its implications for the employment benefit laws within their purview.

Experts say it will be up to those agencies to determine, for example, how much time employers will be given to review the design of their benefit plans and communication strategies for potential conflicts, as well as to make any changes necessary to bring their plans into compliance.

“It seems like it's going to be multiple agencies and multiple guidance publications that are going to be needed to really frame how this is all going to play out,” said Steve Wojcik, vice president of public policy at the National Business Group on Health, a Washington-based advocacy group for large employers on national health policy issues. “For our members, they're still at the very general level of questioning in terms of what it is they need to do or change.”

Perhaps the most urgent issue for employers, experts say, is the interplay between federal regulations governing employment benefits and the patchwork of varied state-level marriage laws across the nation.

To date, same-sex marriages have been declared legal in the District of Columbia and in 12 states. They are: Connecticut; Iowa; Maine; Maryland; Massachusetts; Minnesota; New Hampshire; New York; Oregon; Rhode Island; Vermont; and Washington.

For multistate employers, a key issue in need of quick clarification from the government is which states' marriage laws will control the employer's coverage obligations. Presently, it is unknown whether federal benefit laws will default to statutes in the state in which the employer is domiciled, the state in which the marriage was sanctioned or the state in which the couple resides.

Providing such a definitive guide to interstate compliance obligations could be extremely difficult for regulators, at least in the short term, experts say. Susan Hoffman, a Philadelphia-based shareholder at law firm Littler Mendelson P.C., said that DOMA's Section 2 provisions, which were not challenged in the case before the Supreme Court, will continue to permit states that oppose legalization of same-sex marriages to refuse recognition of valid marriages performed in other states.

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“It's unclear what happens if, for example, you have employees in a state that permits same-sex marriage but covers them under a benefit plan based in a state that doesn't recognize same-sex marriage,” Ms. Hoffman said. “You have all of these cross-border issues that, quite frankly, are probably not going to get resolved until someone brings a challenge to Section 2 of DOMA.”

Another issue for regulators to sort out — and potentially the largest source of additional benefit costs for employer plan sponsors — will be the extent to which same-sex spouses' eligibility for benefits will be applied retroactively.

“On its face, the court's opinion appears to say that (Section 3) was always unconstitutional,” said Jay Kirschbaum, St. Louis-based legal and research practice leader of Willis North America Inc. “Presumably, that would mean that the (decision's) application to federal benefits and the tax consequences would become effective now and going backward, but it's not yet clear how that's all going to play out."