On June 26, 2013, the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark 5–4 decision in United States v. Windsor, striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as a violation of the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal liberty. The ruling meant that, for the first time in U.S. history, the federal government was required to recognize same-sex marriages legally performed in states where they were permitted.
Congress passed DOMA in 1996 with broad bipartisan support, and President Bill Clinton signed it into law. The statute had two primary operative sections. Section 2 allowed states to refuse recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions. Section 3, the provision challenged in Windsor, defined “marriage” and “spouse” exclusively as a union between one man and one woman for all federal purposes. This single definition affected more than 1,000 federal statutes and regulations governing areas such as tax filing, Social Security survivor benefits, immigration sponsorship, federal employee health benefits, and veteran spousal benefits.
The plaintiff, Edith Windsor, married Thea Spyer in Canada in 2007; their marriage was recognized by their home state of New York. When Spyer died in 2009, she left her estate to Windsor. Because DOMA Section 3 barred federal recognition of their marriage, the Internal Revenue Service denied Windsor the unlimited marital deduction from federal estate taxes available to opposite-sex spouses. Windsor was forced to pay $363,053 in estate taxes—a bill that would have been zero had the federal government recognized her marriage. She sued for a refund, arguing the law violated the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause.
Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy held that DOMA’s principal effect was to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal. The Court determined that by creating two contradictory marriage regimes within the same state—one recognized by the state, the other erased by the federal government—DOMA imposed a stigma on same-sex couples and violated basic due process and equal protection principles. The majority emphasized that the federal government has historically deferred to state domestic relations law; DOMA’s departure from that tradition signaled a bare congressional desire to harm a politically unpopular group, which the Constitution forbids.
The decision triggered a rapid administrative overhaul. Within weeks, the IRS announced that legally married same-sex couples would be treated as married for all federal tax purposes, regardless of whether their state of residence recognized the union. The Department of Defense extended spousal benefits to service members in same-sex marriages. The Social Security Administration began processing survivor claims, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services started approving visa petitions for same-sex spouses on the same terms as opposite-sex spouses. For thousands of families, the ruling translated directly into tax savings, health coverage, immigration security, and retirement protections.
Windsor did not require every state to license same-sex marriages—that came two years later in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). However, Windsor established the constitutional framework that made Obergefell possible. It affirmed that the federal government cannot single out lawfully married couples for disfavored treatment without a legitimate justification. For everyday readers, the case illustrates how a single statutory definition can cascade through the tax code, the immigration system, and the safety net, and how the Court’s interpretation of “equal liberty” determines whether those cascades reinforce or dismantle inequality.
Image: Photo: Mario Spencer · Pexels
Based on reporting from en.wikipedia.org.
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