Only an arrogant legal culture that has lost all appreciation of its own limitations could take such a suggestion seriously. The Court’s holding, too, seems to rest on “the equal protection guarantee of the Fourteenth Amendment,” ante, at 25—although the Court is careful not to adopt most of Windsor’s and the United States’ argument. Yet the opinion does not argue that same-sex marriage is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” Washington v. Glucksberg, 521 U. S. 702, 720–721 (1997), a claim that would of course be quite absurd. See, e.g., ante, at 20. But there is no such departure when one State adopts or keeps a definition of marriage that differs from that of its neighbor, for it is entirely expected that state definitions would “vary, subject to constitutional guarantees, from one State to the next.” Ibid. §457:4 (West Supp. 3d 358, 920 N. E. 2d 328 (2009). At least as it applies to heterosexual couples, this view of marriage now plays a very prominent role in the popular understanding of the institution. In these provisions, Congress used marital status as a way of defining this class—in part, I assume, because it viewed marriage as a valua- ble institution to be fostered and in part because it viewed married couples as comprising a unique type of economic unit that merits special regulatory treatment.

Does the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines the term "marriage" under federal law as a "legal union between one man and one woman" deprive same-sex couples who are legally married under state laws of their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection under federal law? DOMA’s principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal. 78 (A. Hamilton)). It prevents same-sex married couples from obtaining government healthcare benefits they would otherwise receive. The United States attempts to distinguish Chadha on  the ground that it “involved an unusual statute that vested the House and the Senate themselves each with special procedural rights—namely, the right effectively to veto Executive action.” Brief for United States (jurisdiction) 36. The silence of the Constitution on this question should be enough to end the matter as far as the judiciary is concerned. The Internal Revenue Service denied the refund, concluding that, under DOMA, Windsor was not a “surviving spouse.” Windsor commenced this refund suit in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. But in a footnote to that statement, the Court acknowledged Arti- cle III’s separate requirement of a “justiciable case or controversy,” and stated that this requirement was satisfied “because of the presence of the two Houses of Congress as adverse parties.” Id., at 931, n. 6. The Court has sometimes found the Due Process Clauses to have a substantive component that guarantees liber- ties beyond the absence of physical restraint. The Impact of the Supreme Court's Decision in. In response to the notice from the Attorney General, the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) of the House of Representatives voted to intervene in the litigation to defend the constitutionality of §3 of DOMA. BLAG’s arguments are just as candid about the congressional purpose. 47, at 301. Spyer died, leaving her estate to Windsor. It is hard to admit that one’s political opponents are not monsters, especially in a struggle like this one, and the challenge in the end proves more than today’s Court can handle. Supra, at 19 (quoting Romer, supra, at 633). In determining whether a law is motived by an improper animus or purpose, “ ‘[d]iscriminations of an un- usual character’ ” especially require careful considera- tion. 1, 551 U. S. 701, 720 (2007) (internal quotation marks omitted)—are those that are “so seldom relevant to the achievement of any legitimate state interest that laws grounded in such considerations are deemed to reflect prejudice and antipathy.” Cleburne v. Cleburne Living Center, Inc., 473 U. S. 432, 440 (1985); cf. It applied heightened scrutiny to classifications based on sexual orientation, as both the Department and Windsor had  urged.
From this standpoint the United States was a prevailing party below, just as Windsor was. That would be replaced by a system in which Congress and the Executive can pop immediately into court, in their institutional capacity, whenever the President refuses to implement a statute he believes to be unconstitutional, and whenever he implements a law in a manner that is not to Congress’s liking. Subject to certain constitutional guarantees, see, e.g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1, “regulation of domestic relations” is “an area that has long been regarded as a virtually exclusive province of the States,” Sosna v. Iowa, 419 U. S. 393, 404. DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. In his separate dissent, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote that the Supreme Court had neither the jurisdiction to review the case nor the power to invalidate democratically enacted legislation. To be sure, the Court in Chadha said that statutory aggrieved-party status was “not altered by the fact that the Executive may agree with the holding that the statute in question is unconstitutional.” Id., at 930–931. In Deposit Guaranty Nat. When the couple files their next federal tax return, may it be a joint one? “[A] taxpayer has standing to challenge the collection of a specific tax assessment as unconstitutional; being forced to pay such a tax causes a real and immediate economic injury to the individual taxpayer.” Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, Inc., 551 U. S. 587, 599 (2007) (plurality opinion) (emphasis deleted). For these reasons, the prudential and Article III requirements are met here; and, as a consequence, the Court need not decide whether BLAG would have standing to challenge the District Court’s ruling and its affirmance in the Court of Appeals on BLAG’s own authority. Const., Amdt. And given the size of government and the degree to which it now regulates daily life, it seems unlikely that either Congress or the States could maintain complete neutrality even if they tried assiduously to do so. Assuming that Congress has the power under the Constitution to enact the laws affected by §3, Congress has the power to define the category of persons to whom those laws apply.

Here, the United States retains a stake sufficient to support Article III jurisdiction on appeal and in this Court. When the State used its historic and essential authority to define the marital relation in this way, its role and its power in making the decision enhanced the recognition, dignity, and protection of the class in their own community. See Heller v. Doe, 509 U. S. 312, 320 (1993) (a classification “ ‘must be upheld . This case is unusual, however, because the §530D letter was not preceded by an adverse  judgment. See id., at 438 (“Here, the plaintiffs include twenty senators, whose votes against ratification have been overridden and virtually held for naught although if they are right in their contentions their votes would have been sufficient to defeat ratification. The Constitution does not codify either of these views of marriage (although I suspect it would have been hard at the time of the adoption of the Constitution or the Fifth Amendment to find Americans who did not take the traditional view for granted). Laying such a charge against them should require the most extraordinary evidence, and I would have thought that every attempt would be made to indulge a more anodyne explanation for the statute. See Brief for Respondent Windsor (merits) 17–62; Brief for United States (merits) 16–54; cf. On the merits of the tax refund suit, the District Court ruled against the United States. It is appropriate to begin by addressing whether either the Government or BLAG, or both of them, were entitled to appeal to the Court of Appeals and later to seek certiorari and appear as parties here.

The responsibility of the States for the regulation of domestic relations is an important indicator of the substantial societal impact the State’s classifications have in the daily lives and customs of its people. However, even setting aside traditional moral disapproval of same-sex marriage (or indeed same-sex sex), there are many perfectly valid—indeed, downright boring—justifying rationales for this legislation. The class to which DOMA directs its restrictions and restraints are those persons who are joined in same-sex marriages made lawful by the State. Argued March 27, 2013—Decided June 26, 2013, in her capacity as executor of theESTATE OF.

The majority never utters the dread words “substantive due process,” perhaps sensing the disrepute into which that doctrine has fallen, but that is what those statements mean.

See, e.g., Baude, Beyond DOMA: Choice of State Law in Fed- eral Statutes, 64 Stan.

2d ed., 2012).

A party invoking the Court’s authority has a sufficient stake to permit it to appeal when it has “ ‘suffered an injury in fact’ that is caused by ‘the conduct complained of’ and that ‘will be redressed by a favorable decision.’ ” Camreta v. Greene, 563 U. S. ___, ___ (2011) (slip op., at 5) (quoting Lujan v. Defenders of Wildlife, 504 U. S. 555, 560–561 (1992)). See Lawrence v. Texas, 539 U. S. 558, 599 (2003) (Scalia, J., dissenting). The District Court, however, did grant intervention by BLAG as an interested party. The matter would have been left, as so many matters ought to be left, to a tug of war between the President and the Congress, which has innumerable means (up to and including impeachment) of compelling the President to enforce the laws it has written.
. NOTE: Where it is feasible, a syllabus (headnote) will be released, as is being done in connection with this case, at the time the opinion is issued. Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer shared their lives together as a couple in New York City for 44 years.

3515. if there is any reason- ably conceivable state of facts’ ” that could justify it). BLAG’s sharp adversarial presentation of the issues satisfies the prudential concerns that otherwise might counsel against hearing an appeal from a decision with which the principal parties agree. Ann. The majority extensively chronicles DOMA’s departure from the normal allocation of responsibility between State  and Federal Governments, emphasizing that DOMA “rejects the long-established precept that the incidents, benefits, and obligations of marriage are uniform for all married couples within each State.” Ante, at 18. certainly not equipped to make such an assessment. trace[able] to the challenged action of the defendant, and not .