Thread by @addie_1122

🏳️‍🌈TODAY’S PRIDE HERO🏳️‍🌈
Edith "Edie" Windsor (June 20, 1929 – September 12, 2017)

Was an LGBT activist from the early 1970s until her death,
and is most notably known for being the lead plaintiff in the case of
US v. Windsor which overturned Sec. 3 of DOMA
#LGBTVoices

Edie was an American LGBT rights activist, and was the lead plaintiff in the SCOTUS case, United States v. Windsor, which overturned Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act and was considered a landmark legal victory for the same-sex marriage movement in the United States

She worked at IBM for 16 years. The company had rejected her insurance form naming her partner Thea Spyer as a beneficiary. She also assisted the Atomic Energy Comm., and was at one point even investigated by the FBI. She feared that it was because of her closeted homosexuality

Edie met Thea in 1963 in Greenwich Village, a neighborhood in New York City. In the late spring of 1965 they began dating each other. In 1967, Thea asked Edie to marry, although it was not yet legal anywhere in the United States. Thea proposed with a circular diamond pin

In June 1969, Edie & Thea returned from a vacation to discover the Stonewall Riots had begun the night before. In the following years, the couple publicly participated in LGBT events. Following her departure from IBM in 1975, she increased her involvement with LGBT organizations

Edie and Thea entered into a domestic partnership in NYC in 1993. Thea suffered a heart attack in 2002. In 2007, she was told that she had less than a year to live. NY had not yet legalized same-sex marriage. The couple opted to marry in Canada, on May 22, 2007. Thea died in 2009

Upon Thea's death on February 5, 2009, Edie became the executor and sole beneficiary of the estate, via a revocable trust. Edie was required to pay $363,053 in federal estate taxes on her inheritance of her wife's estate

Had federal law recognized the validity of their marriage, Edie would have qualified for an unlimited spousal deduction and paid no federal estate taxes. Edie sought to claim the federal estate tax exemption for surviving spouses.

She was barred from doing so by Sec. 3 of DOMA, which provided that the term "spouse" only applied to marriages between a man and woman. The IRS found that the exemption did not apply to same-sex marriages, denied her claim, and compelled her to pay the $363,053 in estate taxes

In 2010 Edie filed a lawsuit against the federal government in the U.S. Dist Court for the Southern Dist of NY, seeking a refund because DOMA singled out legally married same-sex cpls for "differential treatment compared to other similarly situated couples without justification."

Edie continued to be a public advocate for same-sex marriage in the years following United States v. Windsor. She helped Senator Dianne Feinstein and Representative Jerrold Nadler introduce the Respect for Marriage Act at a press conference in Washington, D.C. in 2011

In 2012, Judge Jones ruled that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional under the due process guarantees of the 5th Amendment & ordered the federal government to issue the tax refund, including interest. The US 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed in a 2–1 decision later in 2012

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case in March 2013, and in June of that year issued a 5–4 decision affirming that Section 3 of DOMA was unconstitutional "as a deprivation of the liberty of the person protected by the Fifth Amendment."
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_St…

On September 26, 2016, Edie married Judith Kasen at New York City Hall. At the time of the wedding, Edie was 87 and Judith was 51. Edie was a member of the non-denominational Congregation Beit Simchat Torah synagogue, has been self-described as the world's largest LGBT synagogue

Edith "Edie" Windsor died on September 12, 2017 at the age of 88

#LGBT #LGBTQ #PrideMonth

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