Edith "Edie" Windsor (née Schlain) was born in Philadelphia on June 20, 1929, to a Russian Jewish immigrant family of modest means.

[4] Thea Clara Spyer was born in Amsterdam on October 8, 1931, to a wealthy Jewish family that escaped the Holocaust by fleeing to the United States before the Nazi invasion of the Netherlands.

[10] Spyer proposed to her in 1967 but presented her with a diamond brooch instead of an engagement ring, fearing that Windsor would be stigmatized at work if her colleagues knew about her relationship.

[11][12] In 2007, the pair, both residents of New York, married in Toronto, Ontario, under the provisions set forth in the Canadian Civil Marriage Act, after 40 years of romantic partnership.

Finally, she was referred to Roberta Kaplan, a partner at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, who later recalled: "When I heard her story, it took me about five seconds, maybe less, to agree to represent her".

[20][21] On February 23, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement regarding two lawsuits challenging DOMA Section 3, Windsor and Pedersen v. Office of Personnel Management.

He explained that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had previously defended Section 3 of DOMA in several other lawsuits in jurisdictions where precedents required the court to use the rational basis standard for reviewing laws concerning sexual orientation.

Since Windsor was filed in the jurisdiction of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which had no such precedent, the DOJ had identified the proper standard of review in such cases as the more demanding "heightened scrutiny".

[25] New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman filed a brief supporting Windsor's claim on July 26, 2011, arguing that DOMA Section 3 could not survive the scrutiny used for classifications based on sex and constitutes "an intrusion on the power of the state to define marriage".

[26] On August 1, 2011, BLAG filed a brief opposing Windsor's motion for summary judgment on the grounds that sexual orientation is not subject to heightened scrutiny.

[27] On June 6, 2012, Judge Barbara S. Jones ruled that a rational basis review of Section 3 of DOMA showed it to be unconstitutional, as it violated plaintiff's rights under the equal protection guarantees of the Fifth Amendment, and ordered that Windsor receive the tax refund due to her.

[33] Meanwhile, Windsor's legal counsel filed a petition of certiorari before judgment with the Supreme Court on July 16, 2012, asking for the case to be considered without waiting for the Second Circuit's review, citing the plaintiff's age and health.

[34] The DOJ replied to BLAG's motion to dismiss, asserting: (1) its standing as an "aggrieved party", because the District Court's stay prevents the DOJ from taking steps to cease enforcement of Section 3 of DOMA; and (2) that its participation ensures consideration of the constitutional issue if the Second Circuit or the Supreme Court determines that BLAG lacks standing.

[37][39] Our straightforward legal analysis sidesteps the fair point that same-sex marriage is unknown to history and tradition, but law (federal or state) is not concerned with holy matrimony.

[40]It was the first federal court of appeals decision to hold that laws that classify people based on sexual orientation should be subject to heightened scrutiny.

In addition to the question presented by the DOJ – "Whether Section 3 of DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection" for same sex partners – the court also asked the parties to brief and argue two other questions: whether the government's agreement with the Second Circuit's decision deprived the court of a "real dispute" and therefore of jurisdiction to hear the case, and whether BLAG had standing in its own right, i.e., the legal right to independently ask for the appeal to be heard in the event that the government was not a valid petitioner.

[45] Windsor noted in a statement that when she and her partner met nearly 50 years earlier that they never dreamed their marriage would land before the Supreme Court "as an example of why gay married couples should be treated equally, and not like second-class citizens".

Among the over 1,000 statutes and numerous federal regulations that DOMA controls are laws pertaining to Social Security, housing, taxes, criminal sanctions, copyright, and veterans' benefits.

[74]Scalia concluded by saying that the Supreme Court "has cheated both sides, robbing the winners of an honest victory, and the losers of the peace that comes from a fair defeat".

He wrote: "The dominant theme of the majority opinion is that the Federal Government's intrusion into an area 'central to state domestic relations law applicable to its residents and citizens' is sufficiently 'unusual' to set off alarm bells.

"[51] Scalia was uncertain whether the majority relied upon that federalism argument or based its decision on Equal Protection grounds, writing, "if this is meant to be an equal-protection opinion, it is a confusing one".

He considered that Scalia appeared to have been unable to resist "the temptation to use the occasion to insult the Court's majority, and Justice Kennedy in particular, in essentially ad hominem ...

Instead "they are creating a patchwork of regulations affecting gay and lesbian couples – and may be raising questions about discrimination and fairness in the way that federal benefits are distributed.

"[81] In February 2015, the United States Department of Labor issued its final rule amending the definition of spouse under the FMLA in response to Windsor.

'"[110] Conversely, U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman, upholding Louisiana's ban on same-sex marriage on September 3, 2014, reviewed the arguments before him and wrote: "Both sides invoke the Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Windsor.

(citations omitted)He quoted Chief Justice Roberts' dissent as a reason not to read Windsor as a guide for deciding the constitutionality of restrictions on same-sex marriage: "The Court does not have before it", wrote Roberts, "and the logic of its opinion does not decide the distinct question whether the States, in the exercise of their 'historic and essential authority to define the marital relation', ... may continue to utilize the traditional definition of marriage".

He criticized several recent federal court decisions for failing to specify the appropriate standard of review they used to evaluate the constitutionality of bans on same-sex marriage.

Instead he cited Windsor for its "powerful reminder" that "'The definition of marriage is the foundation of the State's broader authority to regulate the subject of domestic relations'".

[111] A 3-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in SmithKline v. Abbott considered what standard of review to apply when determining whether sexual orientation can be used in selecting the members of a jury.

In its words and its deed, Windsor established a level of scrutiny for classifications based on sexual orientation that is unquestionably higher than rational basis review.