Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
Vallejos and Daniel Domingo appealed their cases to the Court of Final Appeal, and were respectively assigned the case numbers FACV 19 and 20/2012. They would be represented before the CFA by Michael Fordham; David Pannick continued to represent the Government. Chief Justice Geoffrey Ma rejected a further application for joinder by eight-year-old Liang Wing-ki, the Hong Kong-born daughter of mainland parents, whose next friend, mother Li Yinxian, filed suit on her behalf. Philip Dykes, for the applicant, argued that because Vallejos and Domingo's case would touch on issues of interpretation of the Basic Law under Article 158, Liang's interests would also be affected. In rejecting Liang's application, Ma stated: "We feel that the points you seem to argue are adequately covered and will be adequately covered". Liang and other Hong Kong-born children like her were ruled to be entitled to the right of abode in Hong Kong in the 2001 case "Director of Immigration v. Chong Fung Yuen".
Massachusetts v. United States Department of Health and Human Services
On June 29, BLAG filed a petition for certiorari with the Supreme Court in "Gill". The DOJ filed a petition in this case on July 3, while asking the Supreme Court to review "Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management" as well. The DOJ's petitions in "Gill" and "Massachusetts" raised the question of whether section 3 violates the Equal Protection Clause. In its reply to those petitions, filed on July 20, 2012, Massachusetts proposed the additional questions of whether section 3 violates the Tenth Amendment and the Spending Clause. BLAG on July 30 asked for extension of the August 2 deadline for its responses to the DOJ petition in this case and in "Golinski" to August 31, which request was granted. The petition for the writ of certiorari was dismissed after "United States v. Windsor" was decided.