The Supreme Court struck down the Defense of Marriage Act’s federal definition of marriage on June 26, 2013, ruling 5–4 in United States v. Windsor that Section 3 of the statute violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantees of due process and equal protection. Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, concluded that the law’s purpose and effect was to impose a disadvantage and stigma on same-sex couples whom their own states had chosen to protect through legal marriage. The ruling opened federal tax benefits, Social Security spousal protections, immigration sponsorship, and federal employee benefits to legally married same-sex couples overnight.
What DOMA Did Before the Ruling
Congress passed the Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, and President Bill Clinton signed it on September 21 of that year. The statute had two operative sections.
Section 3 rewrote the federal definition of marriage. Across more than a thousand federal statutes touching tax filing, veterans’ benefits, immigration, and Social Security, “marriage” meant only a union between one man and one woman, and “spouse” meant only a person of the opposite sex.
Section 2 addressed the states. It said no state was required to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in another state, notwithstanding the Full Faith and Credit Clause that normally requires states to honor one another’s legal proceedings.
Together, the two sections produced a system where a couple legally married in Massachusetts could be treated as strangers by both the IRS and a neighboring state government.
The Windsor Case
Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer had been a couple in New York City for more than four decades when they married in Canada in 2007. New York recognized the marriage. When Spyer died in 2009, she left her estate to Windsor. Had the federal government recognized them as spouses, Windsor would have owed nothing in federal estate tax under the unlimited marital deduction, which lets a surviving spouse inherit assets free of that tax. Because DOMA classified Windsor as a legal stranger to her own wife, the IRS sent her a bill for $363,053.
Windsor paid the tax and sued for a refund, arguing that Section 3 violated the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection. The case reached the Supreme Court, which ruled in her favor by a single vote. The majority held that DOMA’s federal definition served no legitimate purpose that could overcome the injury it inflicted on couples the states had chosen to marry.
What the Ruling Reached, and What It Did Not
The decision was deliberately narrow. It struck down Section 3, which controlled federal agencies, but left Section 2 untouched. Couples married in states that authorized same-sex marriage gained full federal recognition immediately. Couples living in non-recognizing states still faced a patchwork, and states that banned same-sex marriage were not required by Windsor to start issuing licenses or recognizing marriages from elsewhere.
Federal Benefits That Opened Immediately
Tax
The IRS moved quickly. Revenue Ruling 2013-17 established a “state of celebration” rule: if a same-sex couple was legally married in any jurisdiction that authorized the marriage, the federal government would treat them as married for all tax purposes, regardless of where they lived afterward. A couple married in New York but living in Texas filed federal returns as married.
That single change unlocked a set of provisions that had been closed to same-sex couples. Married filing jointly and married filing separately became available filing statuses. The unlimited marital deduction under 26 U.S.C. § 2056, the provision at the heart of Windsor’s own case, allowed a same-sex surviving spouse to inherit any amount of assets free of federal estate and gift tax, with the tax deferred until the second death. Married couples could elect to split gifts, combining their individual annual gift tax exclusions. And the spousal rollover for retirement accounts became available, letting a surviving spouse roll a deceased spouse’s IRA or 401(k) into their own account and continue deferring taxes. Before Windsor, a same-sex surviving spouse was treated as a non-spouse beneficiary, accelerating the tax hit on inherited retirement savings.
Social Security
The Social Security Administration extended spousal, survivor, and dependent benefits to legally married same-sex couples. The spousal benefit allows a lower-earning spouse to claim up to 50% of the higher-earning spouse’s primary insurance amount at full retirement age. Survivor benefits allow a widow or widower to receive the deceased spouse’s full benefit amount. The SSA adopted the same state-of-celebration rule as the IRS and processed retroactive claims, allowing couples to recoup benefits they had been denied.
Federal Employees
The Office of Personnel Management announced that legally married same-sex spouses of federal employees and retirees were immediately eligible for the same benefits available to opposite-sex spouses, including the Federal Employees Health Benefits program, Federal Employees Group Life Insurance, and beneficiary recognition under the Federal Employees Retirement System. OPM applied the state-of-celebration standard, so eligibility did not depend on where the employee lived.
Immigration
Before Windsor, a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident in a same-sex marriage could not sponsor their spouse for a green card. The ruling changed that. Same-sex spouses became eligible for family-based immigration petitions using Form I-130, the same process available to opposite-sex married couples. For binational couples, this ended a forced choice between staying married and staying in the country.
Obergefell Finished What Windsor Started
Windsor resolved federal recognition but left state marriage bans standing, and Section 2 still gave states cover to refuse recognition of out-of-state marriages. Two years of federal court rulings struck down bans across the country, and the Supreme Court took up the issue in Obergefell v. Hodges, consolidating cases from Michigan, Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee where a federal appeals court had upheld state bans.
On June 26, 2015, exactly two years after Windsor, the Court ruled 5–4 that the Fourteenth Amendment requires every state to license marriages between same-sex couples and to recognize those marriages when lawfully performed elsewhere. Justice Kennedy again wrote the majority opinion, grounding the decision in both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. Every state ban was immediately invalid, and Section 2 of DOMA became unenforceable.
DOMA’s Formal Repeal
Both Windsor and Obergefell were decided by a single vote. Their durability depended on the composition of the Supreme Court, and that vulnerability became concrete in June 2022, when Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in his concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that the Court should reconsider Obergefell and other decisions built on substantive due process reasoning.
Congress responded with the Respect for Marriage Act, which President Biden signed on December 13, 2022. The statute formally repealed DOMA’s Section 2 and replaced it with a federal requirement that no state may deny full faith and credit to a marriage between two people on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, or national origin. The Attorney General and affected individuals can bring enforcement actions in federal court. The law also replaced Section 3’s definition with a rule that an individual is considered married for federal purposes if the marriage was valid where it was entered into.
If the Supreme Court were ever to overturn Obergefell, the Respect for Marriage Act would not require a state to issue new same-sex marriage licenses, but it would require every state to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed elsewhere, and it would preserve federal recognition for all such marriages.