Windsor, Edie, 1929-2017

Edith "Edie" Windsor[1] (née Schlain; June 20, 1929 – September 12, 2017) was an American LGBT rights activist and a technology manager at IBM. She was the lead plaintiff in the 2013 Supreme Court of the United States case United States v. Windsor, which overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act and was considered a landmark legal victory for the same-sex marriage movement in the United States. The Obama administration and federal agencies extended rights, privileges and benefits to married same-sex couples because of the decision.

Windsor was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to James and Celia SchlainWindsor received her bachelor's degree from Temple University in 1950.[2][8] In 1955, she began pursuing a master's degree in mathematics, which she obtained from New York University in 1957.[2][3][6] She then joined IBM, where she worked for the next sixteen years. During this time, she spent two semesters studying applied mathematics at Harvard University on an IBM fellowship.[2]

While attending New York University, Windsor worked for the university's math department, entering data into its UNIVAC. She also worked as a programmer at Combustion Engineering, Inc., where she worked with physicists and the UNIVAC.[6][9]

After receiving her master's degree in mathematics in 1957 from New York University, Windsor began work in senior technical and management positions at IBM in 1958.[3][10] Her work at IBM was primarily related to systems architecture and implementation of operating systems and natural language processors. Windsor began her career at IBM as a mainframe programmer. In May 1968, she attained the title designating the highest level technical position at IBM, senior systems programmer.

Saul Windsor was Edie's older brother's best friend, whom she had known for many years and respected. They went to college together and during their third year, Saul proposed marriage and Edie accepted.[13] Their relationship ended at one time during the engagement when Edie fell in love with a female classmate. However, after Windsor decided she did not want to live life as a lesbian, they reconciled and got married after graduation, in May 1951.[13] They divorced less than one year afterward,[3][14] on March 3, 1952[13] and she confided in him that she longed to be with women.[3][10] Shortly after her divorce, Windsor left Philadelphia for New York City.[15]

Windsor met Thea Spyer, an Amsterdam-born psychologist,[16][17] in 1963 at Portofino, a restaurant in Greenwich Village. When they initially met, each was already in a relationship. They occasionally saw each other at events over the next two years, but it was not until a trip to the East End of Long Island in the late spring of 1965 that they began dating each other.[2][6][15][18] To help keep the relationship a secret from her co-workers, Windsor invented a relationship with Spyer's fictional brother Willy — who was actually a childhood doll belonging to Windsor — to explain Spyer's phone calls to the office.[3] In 1967, Spyer asked Windsor to marry, although it was not yet legal anywhere in the United States.[10] Fearing that a traditional engagement ring might expose Windsor's sexual orientation to her coworkers, Spyer instead proposed with a circular diamond pin.[2][6][15]

Six months after getting engaged, Windsor and Spyer moved into an apartment in Greenwich Village

Windsor and Spyer entered a domestic partnership in New York City in 1993.[6] Registering on the first available day, they were issued certificate number eighty.[2]

Spyer suffered a heart attack in 2002 and was diagnosed with aortic stenosis. In 2007, her doctors told her she had less than a year to live. New York had not yet legalized same-sex marriage, so the couple opted to marry in Toronto, Canada, on May 22, 2007,[18] with Canada's first openly gay judge, Justice Harvey Brownstone,[6][15] presiding, and with the assistance of a filmmaker and same-sex marriage activist familiar with the laws in both countries.[3] An announcement of their wedding was published in The New York Times.[2][3] Spyer died from complications related to her heart condition on February 5, 2009.[3] After Spyer's death, Windsor was hospitalized with stress cardiomyopathy.[2][6][7]

On September 26, 2016, Windsor married Judith Kasen at New York City Hall. At the time of the wedding, Windsor was age 87 and Kasen was age 51.[19][20]

Upon Spyer's death on February 5, 2009, Windsor became the executor and sole beneficiary of Spyer's estate, via a revocable trust. Windsor was required to pay $363,053 in federal estate taxes on her inheritance of her wife's estate.[2][18] Had federal law recognized the validity of their marriage, Windsor would have qualified for an unlimited spousal deduction and paid no federal estate taxes.[3][30][31]

Windsor sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses. She was barred from doing so by Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) (codified at 1 U.S.C. § 7), which provided that the term "spouse" only applied to marriages between a man and woman. The Internal Revenue Service found that the exemption did not apply to same-sex marriages, denied Windsor's claim, and compelled her to pay $363,053 in estate taxes.[2][3][6]

In 2010 Windsor filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking a refund because DOMA singled out legally married same-sex couples for "differential treatment compared to other similarly situated couples without justification."[18][32] In 2012, Judge Barbara S. Jones ruled that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional under the due process guarantees of the Fifth Amendment and ordered the federal government to issue the tax refund, including interest. The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in a 2–1 decision later in 2012.[33][34][35]

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in March 2013, and on 26 June of that year issued a 5–4 decision affirming that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional "as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment."[3][18][36]: 25