Big news from the Supreme Court today: In back-to-back rulings on same-sex marriage, judges refused to rule on Proposition 8, California's ban on gay marriage, clearing the way for gay marriages to resume in the state; and more important, judges ruled 5-4 in favor of extending federal benefits to same-sex couples. That case, which overturned the Defense of Marriage Act, concerned a married gay couple from New York, Edith Windsor and Thea Clara Spyer. After Spyer died in 2008, Windsor inherited both Spyer's property and a $360,000 tax bill that Windsor would not have had to pay had the couple been opposite-sex. Windsor sued, and this morning, the court ruled in her favor. The New Yorker's Ariel Levy was at the apartment of Windsor's lawyer Roberta Kaplan when the ruling was handed down: "Kaplan called her mother and said, 'Total victory, Mom: it couldn’t be better.' Windsor said, 'I wanna go to Stonewall right now!' Then she called a friend and said, 'Please get married right away!'”
