United States v. Windsor
United States v. Windsor is a landmark Supreme Court case from 2013 that addressed the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a federal law that defined marriage exclusively as a union between one man and one woman. The case was brought by Edith Windsor, who faced significant federal tax liabilities after the death of her same-sex spouse, Thea Clara Spyer. Windsor argued that the federal government’s refusal to recognize her marriage violated the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of Windsor, declaring Section 3 of DOMA unconstitutional and thereby extending federal marriage benefits to same-sex couples. This decision not only allowed Windsor to obtain a refund of the estate taxes she had paid, but it also marked a pivotal moment in the fight for marriage equality in the United States. Following the ruling, same-sex couples became eligible for federal marriage benefits, regardless of whether their marriages were recognized in their home states. The outcome was hailed as a significant advancement for LGBTQ+ rights and equality in American society.
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United States v. Windsor
Case information
Date: June 26, 2013
Citation: 570 U.S.‗(2013)
Issue: Same-sex marriage
Background
United States v. Windsor is a 2013 United States Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that the US federal law's recognition of marriage as existing only between heterosexual couples was unconstitutional. Edith Windsor of New York brought the lawsuit against the government after she was mandated to pay more than $363,000 in federal taxes on the estate left to her by her late spouse, Thea Clara Spyer. The Supreme Court's decision in favor of Windsor overturned the provision of the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act that reserved federal marriage benefits only for heterosexual couples, thereby extending these benefits to same-sex couples.
The sequence of events that led to United States v. Windsor began with the marriage of two New York women, Edith Windsor and Thea Clara Spyer, in 2007. The couple married in Toronto, Canada, because same-sex marriage was not legal in the state of New York at that time. Windsor and Spyer then returned to New York, where their marriage was legally recognized by state law sometime later.
Spyer died in 2009, leaving her estate to Windsor. However, US federal law did not recognize same-sex marriages, meaning that federal marriage benefits, such as estate tax exemptions for spouses, did not apply to Windsor. Consequently, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) taxed Windsor $363,053 on Spyer's estate. The federal government's stance on marriage benefits for same-sex couples was based on Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) of 1996, which defined marriage under US federal law as existing between one man and one woman.
Windsor then filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in November 2010. She intended to elicit a federal declaration that DOMA was unconstitutional based on the equal protection clause of the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment. Such a declaration would refund Windsor the estate taxes she had paid. The government initially defended DOMA against the suit, but in early 2011, President Barack Obama and US Attorney General Eric Holder declared that they would stop defending DOMA against Windsor's argument because they agreed that Section 3 was unconstitutional.
The US House of Representatives' Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) petitioned to dismiss Windsor's case. The district court, however, denied the group's petition and eventually held that DOMA was unconstitutional. In late 2012, BLAG petitioned the US Supreme Court to review the district court's decision. After reviewing the case background, the Supreme Court approved BLAG's petition and planned to hear arguments in United States v. Windsor in March 2013.
The Supreme Court began hearing oral arguments in the case on March 27, 2013. The main parties in the case were Windsor and the Obama administration, which supported Windsor's opposition to DOMA, and BLAG, arguing in favor of DOMA.
Windsor contended that DOMA was unconstitutional in its unfair treatment of her and other married gay and lesbian Americans who were not entitled to the same marital rights as heterosexual couples. The Obama administration supported Windsor's argument, saying that gay and lesbian Americans had long suffered from discrimination and hate crimes. For this reason, the administration believed, these people, as an essentially politically powerless minority group, deserved to have DOMA subjected to intense legal scrutiny to determine its constitutionality. The administration held that DOMA violated the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment because it sanctioned inequality among Americans. As proof of this inequality, the administration called attention to Windsor's $363,053 in estate taxes, which a heterosexual widow would not have had to pay.
BLAG responded that DOMA was constitutional and should be subjected only to minimal legal scrutiny because gay and lesbian Americans actually wielded political power because of Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and the larger Democratic Party, all of whom supported the legal ability of gay and lesbian people to marry.
Furthermore, BLAG claimed that throughout American history, gay and lesbian people had not been afforded any special protection under the law, so they should not be granted such protection now. The purpose of DOMA, according to BLAG, was to ensure the legal right of each of the fifty states and the federal government to define marriage as each felt appropriate.
The individual members of BLAG believed that traditional marriage as defined by DOMA, as a union of one man and one woman, was best suited to encouraging healthy procreation and responsible parenting in the American people. The administration answered this assertion by questioning how denying federal marriage benefits to married same-sex couples promoted sensible procreation and parenting.
Opinion of the Court
The nine justices of the Supreme Court discussed all these arguments from late March to late June 2013. On June 27, the court issued its 5-4 decision in favor of Windsor. The majority opinion, written by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, read that DOMA disadvantaged and stigmatized married same-sex couples by denying them equal protection of the law as guaranteed to all Americans under the Constitution's Fifth Amendment. Therefore, the Supreme Court declared Section 3 of DOMA to be unconstitutional.
Impact
With this law struck down, Windsor became eligible to receive a full refund of the estate taxes she had paid, with interest. This meant the IRS would repay her $363,053 in federal estate taxes and New York state would repay her the approximately $275,000 she had paid in state estate taxes. Her interest on these taxes added up to about $70,000.
Within months, the IRS had legally recognized same-sex married couples for the purpose of issuing federal tax benefits. Same-sex couples could now enjoy these benefits anywhere in the United States, even in states that did not legally recognize same-sex marriage. The Supreme Court's ruling in United States v. Windsor was enthusiastically praised by members of the Obama administration and the American gay and lesbian community as representing a significant step toward granting full societal equality to Americans of varying sexual orientations.
Bibliography
Lowrey, Annie. "Gay Marriages Get Recognition from the I.R.S." New York Times. New York Times Company. 29 Aug. 2013. Web. 9 June 2016.
Sahadi, Jeanne. "Edie Windsor Is Owed $638,000 Plus Interest." CNN. Turner Broadcasting System Inc. June 28, 2013. Web. 9 June 2016.
"United States v. Windsor." Legal Information Institute. Cornell University Law School. Web. 9 June 2016.
"United States v. Windsor." Oyez. IIT Chicago-Kent College of Law. Web. 9 June 2016.