Edith Windsor Case Summary

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In this Supreme Court case, Edith Windsor is defending her rights against the United States on whether legally married same gender couples should get federal benefits. Edith Windsor is the respondent in this case and United States is the petitioner. This case was granted on December 7th, 2012 and was argued on March 27th, 2013 (United States v. Windsor). Robert Courts decided this case on June 26th, 2013. The Act where this case comes from is the Defense of Marriage Act; it was enacted in 1996 and states that for the purposes of federal law, the words “marriage” and “spouse” refer to legal unions between one man and one woman (U.S. v. W). Since the DOMA was enacted, some states have allowed same sex genders to get married and other states have not. Edith Windsor is the widow and sole executor of the estate of her late spouse, Thea Clara Spyer, who died in 2009. Edith and Thea were both married in Toronto, Canada, back in 2007, …show more content…
Even though Chief Justice Roberts dissented from the majority opinion, he had summarized its “dominant theme” which says “The dominant theme of the majority opinion is that the Federal Government’s intrusion into an area central to state domestic relations law applicable to its residents and citizen’s is sufficiently unusual to set off alarm bells (U.S. v. W). I think the majority goes off course, as I have said, but it is undeniable that its judgement is based on federalism”. The Court had found that the DOMA had offended the Constitution because it had represented an “unusual deviation from the usual tradition of recognizing and accepting state definitions of marriage (U.S. v. W).” The Court had stated that “By history and tradition the definition and regulation of marriage has been treated as being within the authority and realm of the separate States (Understanding