Supreme court strikes down DOMA

Hollingsworth v. Perry, 570 U.S. ___ (2013), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that initiative sponsors do not have Article III standing to appeal an adverse decision to the appellate level.[2]
As a result, the Supreme Court's ruling vacated decisions by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit and the Supreme Court of California and left in place the original decision by a district court judge from the United States District Court for the Northern District of California. That decision held that a California initiative, Proposition 8, was unconstitutional under the Equal Protection Clause and that the state of California's decision to deny marriage rights to same-sex couples was based solely on animus.
Lawsuits challenging Proposition 8 were filed in state and federal courts nearly immediately after the initiative's passage in 2008. In Strauss v. Horton (2009), the California Supreme Court ruled that Proposition 8 was a valid enactment under California law. However, in August 2010, Judge Vaughn Walker of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that Proposition 8 violated the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The judgment was stayed pending appeal.[3] On February 7, 2012, a divided three judge panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld the decision of the district court, though it did so on much narrower grounds than the District Court did.[4] On June 5, 2012, the Ninth Circuit denied a request for a rehearing en banc.[5] The proponents of Proposition 8 appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court on July 31, 2012.[6] The Supreme Court agreed to hear the case by granting a writ of certiorari on December 7, 2012. Oral arguments were heard on March 26, 2013.[7] On June 26, 2013, the Court held that the parties who had intervened to defend Proposition 8 (after the state of California declined to defend it) did not have standing. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the Ninth Circuit with instructions that the appeal be dismissed.[8] Once the Court of Appeals formally dismisses the appeal, same-sex marriage will again be legal in California.
The case was previously titled Perry v. Schwarzenegger, then Perry v. Brown.[9]
The case has long been regarded as a landmark case by supporters of both the plaintiffs and the defense.[10][11][12] The plaintiffs' attorneys, Theodore Olson and David Boies, were listed on the 2010 Time 100 for "their nonpartisan and strong legal approach to challenging Proposition 8"

United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. ___ (2013), is a United States Supreme Court case in which the Court held that Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) is unconstitutional.
The defendant-respondent, Edith Windsor, was the female spouse of Thea Spyer, another female whom she married in Canada in 2007 in a same-sex marriage, which the State of New York recognized as valid. Spyer died, and left Windsor everything she owned. Under federal law, a person may leave their spouse an unlimited amount without estate tax, but for any other person the limit is $3.2 million dollars. The Internal Revenue service, determining that under DOMA Windsor and Spyer were not considered married for Federal estate tax purposes, therefore the spousal exemption did not apply, and Spyer's estate owed the government US$363,053 in estate taxes. Windsor paid the tax, then sued for a refund. The trial court found the DOMA to be unconstitutional as a violation of the Fifth Amendment's equal protection clause, and ordered the government to refund the tax paid, plus interest. The government appealed.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York's decision in Windsor v. United States, which found Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) unconstitutional, as it defines the term marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" and spouse as "a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife".
In the Interim, the Attorney General of the United States informed Congress that the Obama Administration believed the statute was unconstitutional, and wouldn't defend it, but wouldn't refund the tax, thus allowing Congress to have standing to defend the suit, which it chose to do.
The U.S. Supreme Court granted certiorari in December 2012 and heard oral arguments on March 27, 2013. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Windsor on June 26, 2013, striking down Section 3 of DOMA and declaring the provision unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment.[1]