From Massachusetts to Obergefell: a Complete Timeline of When the Us Legalized Gay Marriage
Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, state-level victories remained constrained by federal policy. In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prohibited the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages and exempted states from recognizing marriages performed in other jurisdictions. As a result, couples legally married in Massachusetts were treated as complete legal strangers by the Internal Revenue Service, the Social Security Administration, and federal immigration authorities.
The federal firewall cracked on June 26, 2013, exactly two years prior to Obergefell. In United States v. Windsor, the Supreme Court struck down Section 3 of DOMA as unconstitutional. The plaintiff, 83-year-old Edith Windsor, had been hit with a $363,053 federal estate tax bill following the death of her spouse, Thea Spyer. Had the federal government recognized their lawful New York marriage, the estate tax marital deduction would have reduced that tax burden to zero.
Justice Kennedy again authored the 5, 4 majority opinion, holding that DOMA's primary effect was to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and impose an explicit disadvantage upon them. Striking down Section 3 unlocked more than 1,100 federal statutory provisions for married same-sex couples living in states where their unions were legally recognized.
