Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer were in a long-term relationship, registered as domestic partners in New York City, and married in Canada in 2007. After Spyer died in 2009, her estate passed to Windsor, but because Section 3 of DOMA defined "marriage" and "spouse" to exclude same-sex spouses for federal law purposes, Windsor was denied the federal estate tax marital deduction. Windsor paid $363,053 in federal estate tax and then sought a refund and a declaration that DOMA violated equal protection under the Fifth Amendment. The court found that New York recognized Windsor's Canadian marriage in the relevant tax year.
Issue
Does Section 3 of DOMA, which excludes same-sex spouses from the federal definition of marriage and spouse, violate the equal protection guarantee embodied in the Fifth Amendment as applied to Windsor? Also, do Windsor's standing and Baker v. Nelson bar the court from reaching that constitutional question?
Rule
Equal protection requires that similarly situated persons be treated alike, and under rational basis review a legislative classification must bear a rational relationship to a legitimate governmental interest. At a minimum, the court must know the relation between the classification adopted and the object to be attained, and a classification cannot be sustained where the asserted justifications are too attenuated, illegitimate, or unsupported by the realities of the subject addressed.
🔒
See the holding & full analysis
Create a free KwikCourt account to unlock the rest of this brief — and practice the case.
The court's holding and reasoning
Doctrine tests, pitfalls & exam hypotheticals
10 practice questions + 4 AI-graded essays on this case
One of 10 multiple-choice questions for this case. Pick an answer to see why.
Nina Alvarez and Keisha Benton were married in Toronto and lived in Buffalo, New York. After Keisha died, Nina paid a federal inheritance-related tax because a federal statute denied recognition to same-sex spouses; she then sued for a refund. At the time of payment, New York executive agencies and intermediate appellate courts uniformly recognized valid out-of-state same-sex marriages, although the state's highest court had earlier said the state constitution did not require issuance of same-sex marriage licenses.
Which is the strongest argument that Nina has standing to challenge the federal statute?
Explanation. Standing requires injury in fact, causation, and redressability. Under the majority opinion, a taxpayer had standing where the relevant state, through executive action and appellate decisions, recognized the out-of-state same-sex marriage during the relevant tax year, making the tax injury fairly traceable to the federal nonrecognition rule and redressable by a refund. A prior state-court refusal to require in-state licensing did not negate recognition for this separate purpose. (Derived from Windsor v. United States (n.d.).)