2013

United States v. Windsor

Supreme Court invalidates DOMA Section 3 in United States v. Windsor

The case that dismantled the federal definition of marriage started with an estate-tax bill for $363,053 — and the government appealed a judgment it agreed was right.

Five to four, on 26 June 2013

The U.S. Supreme Court decided United States v. Windsor on 26 June 2013, affirming the Second Circuit by five votes to four.

Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan, held Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty protected by the Fifth Amendment.

The decision affirmed the lower-court order requiring the Treasury to refund the $363,053 in estate tax paid by Edith Windsor's estate, with interest.

How a tax refund reached the Supreme Court

Windsor had married Thea Clara Spyer in Ontario in 2007. New York recognized the marriage before Spyer's death in 2009, but the federal government refused to treat Windsor as a surviving spouse.

The Justice Department told Congress it would stop defending Section 3 while the executive continued enforcing the statute and pursued review so the courts could rule definitively; the House's Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group intervened to defend it.

The Court held that the United States retained a sufficient stake because it had not paid the refund, even though the executive agreed with Windsor that Section 3 was unconstitutional.

What Windsor did not decide

It did not establish a nationwide constitutional right to marry — that came in Obergefell v. Hodges two years later — and it left DOMA Section 2 and state marriage bans standing.

Federal benefits did not all change that morning either. DOMA's definitions reached more than 1,000 federal laws; Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department would coordinate implementation across executive agencies, and the rules followed over ensuing months, generally on a place-of-celebration basis.

The majority's language is often sharpened in retelling. What it said was that no legitimate purpose overcame the statute's purpose and effect of disparaging and injuring couples whom states had protected.

Sources

Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited Date corrected

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →

Date corrected. The research places this at 2013-06-26.