Vallejos v Commissioner of Registration
On 30 September 2011, Justice Johnson Lam of the Court of First Instance of the High Court (CFI) ruled in Vallejos' case that existing legislation restricting FDHs from qualifying for permanent residence contravened the Hong Kong Basic Law. Lam also found that Vallejos and Domingo, but not the three other applicants, had fulfilled the condition of taking Hong Kong as their only permanent home and being ordinarily resident in Hong Kong for seven years. The Court of Appeal of the High Court overturned the CFI's decision on Vallejos' case on 28 March 2012. Vallejos and Domingo then jointly appealed to the Court of Final Appeal (CFA), which heard their case on 26–28 February 2013; the CFA rejected their appeal on 25 March 2013.
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.