guarantees a right to same-sex marriage. and if they make that ruling, that's going to be a national ruling. now if they instead do what the lower court did and say look, california, you gave this right and then you arbitrarily pulled it back just as to this one group, that's unconstitutional. that will be a rule that will apply if any other state tries to do the same thing. but so far it would only cover what happened in california. >> this other case involves doma, the federal defense of marriage act. what is at the heart of this question? >> the heart of that question is whether about the fundamental question of the right to same-sex marriage but whether the federal government can define marriage in a certain way as between one man and one woman. historically that's always been the job of the states to decide what marriage is, to define it. so that really is a federal government stepping somewhere where it hasn't before. then when they've done with that statute is say that people can't