Like countless others, Ms. Windsor had been snared by the Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which barred same-sex married couples from federal recognition as “spouses,” effectively excluding them from the many federal benefits available to married heterosexuals. (Those benefits numbered 1,138, according to a count by the Government Accountability Office, Congress’s fiscal watchdog agency.)
After living together for 40 years, Ms. Windsor and Thea Spyer, a psychologist, were legally married in Canada in 2007. Dr. Spyer died in 2009, and Ms. Windsor inherited her estate. But the Internal Revenue Service denied her the unlimited spousal exemption from federal estate taxes available to married heterosexuals, and she had to pay taxes of $363,053.
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Edith Windsor in 2012. Credit
Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
She sued, claiming that the law, by recognizing only marriages between a man and a woman, unconstitutionally singled out same-sex marriage partners for “differential treatment.”
Affirming two lower court rulings, the Supreme Court, in the United States v. Windsor, overturned the law in a 5-4 ruling. It cited the Fifth Amendment guarantee that no person shall be “deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.”
The Defense of Marriage Act had been adopted in Congress by wide margins and signed by President Bill Clinton under the pressures of an election year, at a time when gay marriage was illegal across the country and odious to millions of Americans.
By striking down the act’s definition of marriage as a union of a man and a woman, the Supreme Court invalidated the entire law and for the first time granted same-sex marriage partners the recognition and benefits accorded married heterosexuals.
But there was a catch. The decision did not say if there was a constitutional right to same-sex unions, and it left in place laws in 37 states that banned such marriages. As a practical matter, that meant the benefits would not extend to couples in states that did not allow same-sex unions, but only to those in 13 states and the District of Columbia, all of which recognized them.
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Gay-rights advocates acknowledged that the ruling had fallen short of their hopes for a constitutional guarantee of nationwide marriage equality. But it was, they said, a crucial step.
President Barack Obama called an elated Ms. Windsor with his congratulations. She became a national celebrity, a gay-rights matriarch, a grand marshal of New York City’s L.G.B.T. Pride March and a runner-up to Pope Francis for Time magazine’s person of the year in 2013.
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Edith Windsor reads a statement to supporters and the news media at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Center in the West Village in Manhattan in June 2013 after the Supreme Court declared the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional. Credit
Michael Appleton for The New York Times
On Tuesday, Mr. Obama said in a statement, “I had the privilege to speak with Edie a few days ago, and to tell her one more time what a difference she made to this country we love.”
“Because people like Edie stood up,” he added, “my administration stopped defending the so-called Defense of Marriage Act in the courts.” He said the day of the 2013 Supreme Court ruling was “a great day for America — a victory for human decency, equality, freedom and justice.”
Ms. Windsor was born Edith Schlain in Philadelphia on June 20, 1929, the youngest of three children of James and Celia Schlain, Jewish immigrants from Russia who struggled with poverty during the Great Depression. Their candy store and their home above it were quarantined and lost after Edith and a brother contracted polio when she was 2.
Edie, as family and friends called her, read voraciously and was an excellent student in public schools. In high school during World War II, she dated boys but recalled having crushes on girls. In 1946, she enrolled at Temple University. She became engaged to her brother’s friend Saul Windsor, but broke it off when she fell in love with a female classmate.
“It was wonderful and terrible,” she told Time magazine years later. Deciding that she did not want a lesbian life, however, she reconciled with Mr. Windsor and married him after receiving her bachelor’s degree from Temple in 1950. Less than a year later, they were divorced.
“Finally, I said, ‘Honey, you deserve more,’ ” Ms. Windsor told The New York Times. “ ‘You deserve someone who feels you’re the most desirable person, and I need something else.’ And I was right. He married the right girl and had a lovely life.”
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Keeping her married name, she moved to New York, took secretarial jobs and in 1957 earned a master’s degree in applied mathematics from New York University. She also learned computer programming, working for a time on the Univac computer for the Atomic Energy Commission at N.Y.U. She was hired by I.B.M. as a computer programmer in 1958.
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A poster of Ms. Windsor and her wife at the time, Thea Spyer, at a celebration outside the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan on June 26, 2013, the day the Supreme Court ruled in Ms. Windsor’s favor. Credit
Don Emmert/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Ms. Windsor kept her sexuality secret from her employer and work colleagues and was terrified of exposure when she patronized lesbian hangouts. She met Dr. Spyer in 1963 at a Greenwich Village restaurant, Portofino, that catered to lesbians on Friday nights. Two years younger than Ms. Windsor, Dr. Spyer was a clinical psychologist, an accomplished violinist and a daughter of prosperous Dutch refugees.
They danced all night, and they saw each other at parties over the next two years. But it was not until 1965, after meeting again in the Hamptons, that they began dating.
In 1967, Dr. Spyer proposed marriage, and they began what became a 40-year engagement, sealed with a diamond brooch — not a ring, which might have raised questions and given them away.
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As their careers flourished, they shared an apartment in Greenwich Village on lower Fifth Avenue, near Washington Square Park; bought a small house in Southampton, N.Y.; traveled to Europe and South America; entertained gay and lesbian friends at dinner parties, and enjoyed the city’s rich cultural life. Returning from a trip to Italy in 1969, they learned that the Stonewall Inn uprising had occurred the night before.
“Until then, I’d always had the feeling — and I know it’s ignorant and unfair — ‘I don’t want to be identified with the queens,’ ” Ms. Windsor told NYU Alumni Magazine in 2011. “But from that day on, I had this incredible gratitude. They changed my life. They changed my life forever.”
Ms. Windsor and Dr. Spyer marched in gay pride parades with rainbow flags, joined gay and lesbian organizations and lived openly as lesbians. In 1975, when I.B.M. moved her group out of the city, Ms. Windsor took early retirement as a senior systems programmer and began what she called a second career as an L.G.B.T.-rights activist.
Ms. Windsor told The New Yorker that being childless was the hardest part of her lesbian life. But as the years passed, children, like marriage, seemed hopelessly beyond reach; one was impractical, the other illegal. (In 2003, Massachusetts became the first state to permit same-sex marriages.)
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Edith Windsor, left, and Judith Kasen. They married in 2016. Credit
Keryn Lowry
Then, in 1977, their lives changed irrevocably. Dr. Spyer learned she had multiple sclerosis, a progressive disease of the central nervous system. As her body slowly deteriorated with paralysis, she used canes, then crutches, then wheelchairs. Caring for her with pulleys, lifts and vans became Ms. Windsor’s round-the-clock life.
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In 1993, when New York City began a domestic partnership registry to extend housing, health insurance and other benefits to gays, lesbians and unmarried heterosexuals, Ms. Windsor and Dr. Spyer were among the first to sign up.
And marriage was still their hope in 2002, when Dr. Spyer had a heart attack, and in 2007, when doctors said she had only a year to live. With time running out, they traveled to Toronto with six friends and were married in a ceremony conducted by Canada’s first openly gay judge. It was later recognized as a valid marriage by New York State.
“Married is a magic word,” Ms. Windsor told a rally outside City Hall in New York a few days before Dr. Spyer, a quadriplegic, died on Feb. 5, 2009. “And it is magic throughout the world. It has to do with our dignity as human beings, to be who we are openly.”
Same-sex marriage became valid in New York State in 2011, too late for Ms. Windsor and Dr. Spyer. But Ms. Windsor’s 2013 Supreme Court victory was followed by an avalanche of lawsuits attacking same-sex marriage bans in jurisdictions where they remained. And on June 26, 2015, the Supreme Court made same-sex marriage a constitutional guarantee all over the land.
Ms. Kasen-Windsor, a banking executive whom Ms. Windsor married on Sept. 26, 2016, is her only survivor. They had met at a gay-rights event and started dating in 2015. They lived in Manhattan and Southampton.
On the day of the 2015 ruling, Ms. Windsor gave a celebratory party. “I’m thrilled, I’m absolutely thrilled,” she told The New Yorker as guests crowded her apartment.
But, she added: “I think it’s only the next major step. We have a history: beginning to see each other with Stonewall, when a whole new community began to recognize itself; the AIDS crisis — we’d always been separated. Gays and lesbians, separated!”
The party fell silent when President Obama appeared on television and hailed “the countless small acts of courage of millions of people across decades who stood up” for gay rights.
“Sometimes,” he said, “there are days like this when that slow, steady effort is rewarded with justice that arrives like a thunderbolt.”
The Justice Department has decided not to bring civil rights charges against the officers involved in the death of Freddie Gray, whose 2015 death in police custody sparked riots and widespread anger in Baltimore, authorities said Tuesday.
In a news release, the Justice Department said its investigation had found “insufficient evidence” to support charges in the case, and pointed to the high bar prosecutors would have had to meet to prove federal charges.
“It is not enough to show that the officer made a mistake, acted negligently, acted by accident, or even exercised bad judgment,” the Justice Department said. “Although Gray’s death is undeniably tragic, the evidence in this case is insufficient to meet these substantial evidentiary requirements.”
The decision likely forecloses any chance that the officers involved in Gray’s high-profile death will face criminal consequences, though the news is not particularly surprising. After a mistrial and three acquittals, Baltimore’s top prosecutor had announced she was ending local authorities’ effort to prosecute the officers, because winning a conviction had proved too difficult.
An attorney for Gray’s family declined to comment. The development was first reported by the Baltimore Sun.
Gray, 25, was arrested in West Baltimore the morning of April 12, 2015, then placed in the back of a police van with his hands cuffed behind his back and his legs shackled. As he was being transported, he suffered a severe neck injury and lost consciousness. He died in the hospital about a week later.
The death sparked violent protests in Baltimore, and Baltimore State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby ultimately charged six officers involved in handling Gray with various state crimes. Meanwhile, the Justice Department launched its own criminal, civil rights investigation into Gray’s death, as well as a broader probe of possible systemic violations in the Baltimore Police Department.
Michael Davey, who represents Lt. Brian Rice, the highest-ranking officer involved in Gray’s arrest, said “We’re very pleased that the Department of Justice has come to the conclusion they did.” He said he only wished the local prosecutor had reached the same determination “prior to any of the criminal charges being placed.”
Rice, along with Officers Caesar Goodson Jr., William Porter, Edward Nero, Garrett Miller and Sgt. Alicia White, were charged with various offenses in Gray’s death, including manslaughter, assault and reckless endangerment. Goodson, who drove the van, was the sole officer charged with murder.
Mosby, on July 27, 2016, dropped criminal charges against White, Miller and Porter. Three other officers — Goodson, Rice and Nero — were found not guilty after separate trials. Porter had gone to trial once, but the proceeding ended in a mistrial.
The Justice Department said it had conducted a comprehensive, independent investigation of the events, reviewing surveillance footage, witness interviews, medical reports and other materials. Prosecutors, the Justice Department said, considered several different legal violations, “including theories of false arrest, excessive force, and deliberate indifference to the risk of serious harm to Gray.”
The investigation included an assessment of whether Gray should have been arrested in the first place, whether Goodson gave Gray a “rough ride” and an analysis of officers’ failure to seatbelt Gray, among many other things.
Even where prosecutors found some fault — Goodson, for example, made a wide right turn and crossed a double yellow line, and Gray was not buckled in per department policy — they could not substantiate criminal wrongdoing, the Justice Department said. The department said evidence “overwhelmingly contradicted reports from some civilian witnesses that Gray was either tased or beaten by the officers.”
The officers could still face professional repercussions. Davey, the attorney who represents Rice, said internal disciplinary hearings are scheduled to begin for five of the six officers in October. Porter is not facing any internal charges. The hearings are public.
The Baltimore department, too, is still broadly working to implement changes. The Justice Department during the Obama administration had found that the Baltimore police officers used excessive force and disproportionately stopped African Americans, and ultimately reached an agreement with the city to institute new policies.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions, though, has taken a markedly different stance on police practices than his predecessors, and he has been particularly critical of broad, court-enforceable agreements to mandate police departments undergo change. His Justice Department tried to delay the reform agreement in Baltimore, though a judge ultimately approved it over federal authorities’ objection.
Sessions seems to be more amenable to charging individual officers with wrongdoing, though — like his predecessors — he has found that doing so is not easy under federal law. The Justice Department announced in May that it would not bring charges against the police officers involved in the death of Alton Sterling, whose fatal shooting in Baton Rouge last summer was captured on a video that rocketed around social media.
More recently, the Justice Department closed without charges its investigation into the death of 19-year-old Michael Moore, who was fatally shot by an officer in Alabama in 2016.
The Justice Department is still probing the high-profile death of Eric Garner, who died in 2014 after he was taken to the ground by New York City police officers. His death was also caught on video, sparking national outrage and helping coin the rallying cry, “I can’t breathe.”
