United States v. Windsor is the 2013 Supreme Court decision that struck down the part of the Defense of Marriage Act barring the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages valid under state law. By a 5–4 vote, the Court held that Section 3 of DOMA violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantees of due process and equal protection, and ordered the federal government to refund a $363,053 estate tax bill that a widow named Edith Windsor should never have owed in the first place.1Justia. United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013)
The Tax Bill That Started It
Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer met in 1965 and spent more than four decades together before marrying in Toronto in 2007. New York, where they lived, recognized the Canadian marriage as valid. Spyer died in 2009 and left her estate to Windsor.
Assets passing from one spouse to another are normally exempt from federal estate tax under the unlimited marital deduction.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 2056 – Bequests, Etc., to Surviving Spouse The IRS refused to treat Windsor as a surviving spouse and sent her a bill for $363,053. She paid it, then sued for a refund.1Justia. United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013)
The Law Being Challenged: Section 3 of DOMA
Signed in 1996 and codified at 1 U.S.C. § 7, Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act defined “marriage” for every federal purpose as a union between one man and one woman, and “spouse” as a person of the opposite sex.3Congress.gov. Public Law 104-199 – Defense of Marriage Act Those two definitions reached into every corner of federal law. A 2004 Government Accountability Office report identified 1,138 federal provisions in which marital status determined eligibility for a benefit, right, or privilege.4U.S. GAO. Defense of Marriage Act: Update to Prior Report
For same-sex couples legally married under state law, the practical result was that Social Security, the IRS, immigration authorities, and every other federal agency treated them as unmarried. They could not file joint tax returns, collect survivor benefits, or sponsor a spouse for a green card. Windsor’s estate tax was one visible example of a much broader pattern.
The Court’s Ruling and Reasoning
On June 26, 2013, the Supreme Court ruled 5–4 that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.1Justia. United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744 (2013)
Kennedy’s opinion rested on two connected ideas. When a state chooses to recognize a marriage, the federal government cannot create a second-tier version of that marriage with fewer rights. And the Fifth Amendment prohibits the federal government from using its power to demean couples whose relationships a state has decided to safeguard. DOMA’s “principal purpose,” Kennedy wrote, was to impose a disadvantage and a stigma on the very people state marriage laws sought to protect.5Legal Information Institute. United States v. Windsor
The reasoning combined equal protection with federalism. Marriage had long been a matter for the states, and Section 3 represented an unusual federal intrusion into that domain, singling out one category of state-authorized marriages for lesser treatment.
The Dissents
The four dissenters split their objections across three opinions. Chief Justice Roberts read the majority as grounded in federalism and pointed out that it said nothing about whether states themselves could continue to ban same-sex marriage. Justice Scalia, joined by Justice Thomas, argued the Court should not have heard the case because the government and Windsor agreed on the outcome, and that on the merits the Court had displaced a political debate belonging to voters and legislatures. Justice Alito, joined in part by Thomas, argued that the Constitution does not require any particular definition of marriage and that Section 3 was a permissible exercise of congressional authority.5Legal Information Institute. United States v. Windsor
What Changed After the Ruling
The decision forced every federal agency to rework how it treated same-sex married couples, and the changes came quickly.
The IRS issued Revenue Ruling 2013-17, concluding that gender-neutral terms like “spouse,” “marriage,” “husband,” and “wife” in the tax code include same-sex couples lawfully married under state law.6Internal Revenue Service. Revenue Ruling 2013-17 Legally married same-sex couples were then required to file federal returns as either married filing jointly or married filing separately.7Internal Revenue Service. Same-Sex Marriages Now Recognized for Federal Tax Purposes
The Social Security Administration updated its rules so that surviving same-sex spouses could claim survivor benefits, and reopened previously denied claims.8Social Security Administration. What Same-Sex Couples Need to Know The Department of Veterans Affairs began recognizing same-sex spouses for compensation, pension, and healthcare benefits after the Attorney General announced the executive branch would stop enforcing the Title 38 restrictions.9U.S. Department of Justice. Attorney General Holder Announces Move to Extend Veterans Benefits to Same-Sex Married Couples For pending claims, the VA assigned effective dates as if the barred provisions had never applied, producing retroactive benefits for some couples.10U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Important Information on Marriage
The Office of Personnel Management extended health insurance, life insurance, and survivor annuities to same-sex spouses of federal workers and retirees regardless of where they lived.11U.S. Office of Personnel Management. I Have a Same Sex Marriage U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services began processing visa petitions for same-sex spouses under a place-of-celebration rule, so a marriage valid where it was performed would be recognized for immigration purposes.12U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Chapter 2 – Marriage and Marital Union for Naturalization
What Windsor Did Not Decide
Windsor struck down the federal definition of marriage. It did not require any state to license or recognize same-sex marriages within its own borders. A couple married in New York would now receive federal benefits; a couple living in a state that prohibited same-sex marriage still could not marry there, and typically could not access state-level marital rights either.
The result for the two years after the decision was a patchwork. In some states, same-sex couples had access to both state and federal marriage rights. In others, they had neither state recognition nor the federal benefits that flowed from it.
Obergefell and the Respect for Marriage Act
The gap Windsor left open closed in June 2015, when the Supreme Court decided Obergefell v. Hodges. That ruling held that the Fourteenth Amendment requires every state to license marriages between same-sex couples and to recognize such marriages performed elsewhere.13Justia. Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U.S. 644 (2015) Windsor bound the federal government to respect state marriages; Obergefell bound the states to allow them.
The text of DOMA remained on the books after Obergefell, unenforceable but not formally repealed. Congress addressed that in December 2022 with the Respect for Marriage Act, which repealed what was left of DOMA, replaced the language of 1 U.S.C. § 7 with a gender-neutral federal definition of marriage, and required every state to give full faith and credit to marriages performed in other states regardless of the sex, race, or ethnicity of the spouses.14Congress.gov. Text – H.R.8404 – 117th Congress: Respect for Marriage Act The statute also created both a federal enforcement mechanism through the Attorney General and a private right of action for anyone harmed by a state’s refusal to recognize a valid out-of-state marriage.15Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 28 USC 1738C – Certain Acts, Records, and Proceedings and the Effect Thereof
Windsor’s $363,053 refund claim set that chain in motion. The case remains a landmark for the principle it established: the federal government cannot treat one class of valid marriages as inferior to another.