Judge: Probation can't split gay pair

A federal judge in Philadelphia has ruled that a long-term gay couple on probation has the same right to associate as a married couple.

Senior U.S. District Judge Marvin Katz issued the ruling in a case involving two Montgomery County men, Daniel Mangini and Steven Roberts, who were convicted in 2004 of dealing 100 grams of methamphetamine.

After their release from federal prison, the U.S. Probation Office declined to allow them to live together, citing a policy that forbids felons on probation from associating with other felons unless they are blood relatives or spouses.

Under the probation department rules, they were not permitted to speak, meet or e-mail during their five-year period of supervised release.

Before their arrests, Mangini and Roberts had lived together for 18 years, shared bank accounts, and helped raise a young girl.

"Defendants were in every way a family," Katz wrote in a 10-page opinion issued Tuesday. "The Due Process Clause [of the Constitution] protects highly personal relationships of deep attachment and commitment."

Katz, who had previously declined to consider the gay convicts' request on procedural grounds, issued his opinion a few weeks after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit directed him to address the issue on its merits.

"I'm elated," Mangini said yesterday in a statement issued by the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented the couple. "This opens possibilities. Finally we get to resume our lives together and dream for the future."

Catherine Roper, a staff attorney with the ACLU of Pennsylvania, said that "by honoring their commitment to each other and fighting to be together, Dan and Steven have helped to bring about groundbreaking law requiring equal treatment for same-sex couples."

Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily McKillip declined to comment.

Contact staff writer John Shiffman at 215-854-2658 or jshiffman@phillynews.com.