Then Comes Marriage: US v Windsor

“We don’t have a principal in the United States where public officials can pick and choose which parts of the constitution they want to comply with.”

Roberta Kaplan, the litigator who successfully argued the United States Vs Windsor case which ultimately brought down DOMA, the Defense of Marriage Act writes about the case in Then Comes Marriage: US v Windsor.  Kaplan’s client Edie Windsor is now 86 years and she spent over 4 decades with her late spouse but when Thea passed away in 2009, because of DOMA, Edie had to pay a huge tax on the property that she inherited when Thea died “because as far as the federal government was concerned, under DOMA, it was as if they had never been married, their marriage was nul and void.”Windsor says the next legal battle for the LGBTQ community is exemplified by the Kim Davis case (the Kentucky clerk and recorder who refused to issue same sex marriage licenses despite the supreme court ruling) “we don’t have a principal in the United States where public officials can pick and choose which parts of the constitution they want to comply with.”