Education Law Insights

The Supreme Court’s DOMA Decision: Impact on School Districts

Posted by Brian Crowley on June 28, 2013

The U. S. Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional a portion of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which had established a federal definition of marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. The Court’s 5-4 vote in U.S. v. Windsor will reach well beyond the case of Edith Windsor, a New York widow, who was sent a $363,000 estate tax bill by the Internal Revenue Service after her wife died in 2009. The Windsor decision means that same-sex couples who are legally married now must be treated the same under federal law as married opposite-sex couples. What does that mean for school districts? My colleagues, Jeff Nowak and Veronica Silva, provide their take on this decision’s impact on employers, including public schools, in a recent FR Alert.