Edith Windsor met her spouse in a Greenwich Village restaurant in 1963. A night of dancing turned into a four-decade relationship, and they finally married in 2007 in Toronto. But when Windsor’s wife, Thea Spyer, died in 2009, Windsor had to pay more than $360,000 in federal estate taxes because the U.S. government did not recognize their marriage.
Now an 82-year-old widow, Windsor filed suit against the government in federal district court in Manhattan last November. She argues that she and her wife were denied equal protection under the law because the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) prevented them from being treated as a married couple. Instead, she was taxed on the value of Spyer’s estate as if they were both single. Windsor is represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union, and Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.
