Edith Windsor and Thea Spyer were a legally married couple in Toronto, Canada. Their marriage was recognized in 2008 under state New York law. Thea Spyer passed away from old age in 2009. Edith Windsor applied for a federal tax exemption concerning the property she inherited from Spyer. The IRS claimed that under federal law, specifically section 3 of the DOMA(Defense of Marriage Act) that their marriage was not recognized by federal law and that the federal tax exemption would not apply to her. As a result, she was forced to pay $363,000 in taxes; if the IRS had accepted her marriage as recognized under federal law, she would have needed to pay nothing in taxes due to marital exemption. She filed a suit in district court, claiming that DOMA was unconstitutional. She seeked recompense as she claimed that DOMA only targeted same-sex couples. She won the case in the district court and later on, again in the U.S. court of Appeals. The judges decided that DOMA was unconstitutional and the government had to recompense Windsor. The Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group(BLAG), which was hired to defend the law in the case against Windsor(the Department of Justice had…show more content… Was the definition of marriage under DOMA specifically worded or was it merely an ambiguous gray area that the IRS took advantage of? Also, when the Supreme Court issued its ruling, what were the legal implications for DOMA? Was Congress forced to revise it? Repeal it? Besides that, this case only addressed the federal government’s recognition of same sex marriages under state law;what about the state's’ recognition of same sex marriage? After all, the Bill of Rights gave all the powers not pertaining to the federal government to the states and the people with the 10th amendment. So what happens if a state refuses to accept the legality of same sex
