ALTHOUGH THE VICTORY WAS HARD FOUGHT, THE LAWYERS SAY THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES.
38 S
ince the U.S. Supreme Court handed down a historic ruling invalidating the Defense of Marriage Act last June, lead plaintiff Edie Windsor has become a kind of folk hero. Windsor is the 84-year-old woman who took the
federal government to court over a $363,000 inheritance tax it levied on her following the 2009 death of her partner of more than 40 years, Thea Spyer. The government did not recognize same-sex marriages, and Windsor was stuck with a tax she could not afford. By now, Windsor’s story is familiar to most
people and is the stuff of legend: an elderly woman takes on the government over a law that recognizes marriage as only between a man and woman and wins. “She can’t walk down the street without
people coming to her,” says Windsor’s attorney Roberta Kaplan. But less known are the stories of the prin-
cipal lawyers in United States v. Windsor. For most of these attorneys, the lawsuit and the pursuit of marriage equality were personal. The attorneys include a woman who’s been
described as the Thurgood Marshall of the marriage equality movement; an attorney at a blue chip law fi rm who as a youngster fell in love with the idea of using laws to champion the rights of the vulnerable and who took on the Windsor case at no cost; an ACLU attorney who’s been advocating for the LGBT com- munity since his days as a Harvard University law student; and a Stanford University public interest law professor who’s been called as a potential U.S. Supreme Court justice.
DIVERSITY & THE BAR® MARCH/APRIL 2014
MCCA.COM
THESE ARE THEIR STORIES
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52