How The Court Ruled on DOMA and Prop. 8: The New Yorker The key section of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the misnamed anti-gay-marriage law enacted almost seventeen years ago, was struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court today, in a 5-4 ruling written by Justice Anthony Kennedy. Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan joined the majority opinion. The decision does not require any state to allow gay marriage. But it means that same-sex couples who are legally married and live in states that recognize gay marriage will be treated as married by the federal government, which until now had been barred from doing so by the law, and will be afforded the same rights and responsibilities as other married couples by the United States government. Kennedy wrote: Justices Roberts, Scalia, and Alito all wrote dissents, the last two of which Thomas joined in part. What Scalia saw as the illogic of the majority decision might be better read as a tribute to its reach: By formally declaring anyone opposed to same-sex marriage an enemy of human decency, the majority arms well every challenger to a state law restricting marriage to its traditional definition. Henceforth those challengers will lead with this Court's declaration that there is "no legitimate purpose" served by such a law, and will claim that the traditional definition has "the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure" the "personhood and dignity" of same-sex couples. The court also ruled that, in the challenge to Proposition 8, California's ban on same-sex marriage, the proponents of the law lacked sufficient legal standing to bring an appeal. Thus, the ruling today reinstates the lower court's holding in favor of the gay-rights plaintiffs who had sought to overturn the law. This outcome had been anticipated, but was far from certain. The apparent net effect will be the return of same-sex marriage to California, if the opinion is interpreted, as most believe it will be, by California officials (although it may take time to see exactly how this plays out). The decision will be confined to California, although it adds a thirteenth state - the biggest and most populous one - to the list of those that allow gay marriage, and thus will have an outsized political effect. 8 opinion, which was also by a vote of 5-4, was written by Chief Justice Roberts. Justice Kennedy wrote the dissent, joined by Thomas, Alito, and Sotomayor. The decision overturning DOMA was long-sought, and is a major victory. The decision in the Prop. 8 case, although it will return same-sex marriage to California, may be seen as somewhat of a disappointment, although even the Prop. 8 lawyers hailed it as a big win, which it was, in a practical sense if not a legal one. The Defense of Marriage Act was enacted, in 1996, by overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress after being introduced by Republicans, who had sought to use a presumed Presidential veto of the law as a campaign issue against President Clinton, who was then seeking reëlection. I was working in the White House at the time. Clinton signed the bill into law, neutralizing the issue. But it had no immediate practical effect, as same-sex marriage was not recognized anywhere at the time. As more and more states recognized gay marriages, however, the law came to be seen as profoundly unfair and, according to recent polling, unpopular. The case before the Court involved a claim by Edith Windsor, an eighty-three-year-old widow, for an estate-tax refund of over three hundred and sixty-three thousand dollars, which she was forced to pay because the federal government did not recognize her marriage to Thea Spyer, her partner of several decades, and, in the last years of her life, her wife. Windsor will get her money back. But the ruling will affect many thousands of couples, perhaps none more dramatically than those gay Americans who are married to foreign nationals and who will now be allowed to sponsor their spouses for green cards. President Obama, in a statement welcoming the DOMA ruling, said, "The laws of our land are catching up to the fundamental truth that millions of Americans hold in our hearts: when all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free." It matters, too, that the majority didn't simply rule for Windsor on narrow grounds - for example, ones related to exclusively to federalism. The ruling was on the grounds of a new equal-protection test, with overtones of other constitutional considerations that will be analyzed and dissected for some time, and thus will serve as a important precedent for other gay-rights cases. Kennedy suggested that laws distinguishing people on the basis of sexual orientation needed to be subjected to "careful consideration" when "determining whether a law is motived by an improper animus or purpose." This is not quite the standard of "heightened scrutiny" that some were hoping for, but in terms of gay-rights jurisprudence it is new and important. Justice Kennedy, often a swing vote, authored the Court's two previously most important pro-gay-rights decisions. The rulings today close out its term for the summer and come ten years to the day of its landmark gay-rights ruling in Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down state anti-sodomy laws. In his dissent in that case, too, Scalia had predicted that the ruling would have wide implications - even opening the door to same-sex marriage. Friday marks the forty-fourth anniversary of the Stonewall rebellion, which is widely considered the beginning of the modern gay-rights movement. This weekend, New York and many other cities will have their annual gay-pride celebrations marking the event. There will be more to celebrate. Photograph by Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty