American Civil Liberties Union

Today, we asked the United States Supreme Court to review the ACLU’s challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act on behalf of Edie Windsor.  A federal trial court struck down DOMA last month in Edie's case, holding that it violates the federal constitution.

Asking for Supreme Court review now, even before the federal appeals court decides Edie’s case, is unusual.  In the vast majority of cases, the Supreme Court won’t take a case until there is a federal appellate decision, but in rare circumstances, it can reach down into lower courts and pluck cases for earlier review.  At this point petitions for Supreme Court review have been filed in two other DOMA cases – GLAD’s Gill v. OPM case, which has been decided by the First Circuit, and Lambda Legal’s Golinski v. OPM  case, which, like Windsor v. United States, doesn’t have an appeals court decision yet.

The Court will likely decide the constitutionality of DOMA this coming term, using one or more of these cases as vehicles for addressing the issue.  We filed because we believe that Edie’s story is a strong addition to the striking collection of plaintiffs in the Gill case and to Karen Golinski’s story as well.  Now the Court has three cases, offering a variety of harms, to choose from.

Edie is an 83-year-old lesbian widow who spent 44 years with her partner and then spouse, Thea Spyer.  Over the course of decades, Edie and Thea dealt together with Thea’s multiple sclerosis and the progressive paralysis that it caused, deepening their love and commitment as Thea gradually became a paraplegic.  When Thea died, two short years after they finally married in 2007, Edie learned that she owed the IRS $363,000 in estate taxes on her inheritance from Thea.  When Edie found out that a straight widow wouldn’t have owed a dime, she decided to challenge DOMA in court.  Her case was one of two that prompted the Department of Justice to stop defending the constitutionality of DOMA and instead to acknowledge that it violates the federal constitution.

Assessing the legacy of the Fair Housing Act on its 45^th Anniversary.

As we celebrate the 45^th anniversary of the landmark Fair Housing Act, it is easy to forget how close we came to being denied the benefit of that landmark legislation. After Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1965 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, civil rights supporters were met with fierce Congressional opposition to extend federal anti-discrimination protections to housing. That years-long resistance was only overcome by the anger and frustration that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King and the growing sense of unfairness that Americans of color could be asked to die in Vietnam but could not rely on the promise of fair housing back in the United States.

On Friday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Edie Windsor’s challenge to the discriminatory, so-called Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  Despite the fact that Edie and her late spouse, Thea Spyer, were together for more than four decades and were legally married in Canada in 2007, DOMA required the federal government to treat the couple as legal strangers.  When Thea passed away in 2009, Edie was forced to pay more than $363,000 in federal estate taxes that would have otherwise been zero had she been married to a man.