The justices said that the Defense of Marriage Act, known as Doma, discriminated against same-sex couples. They declined to rule on California's prohibition of gay marriage, known as Proposition 8, effectively allowing such unions to resume in the state.
Opinion polls indicate that most Americans support same-sex marriage. Wednesday's decisions do not affect the bans on gay unions enshrined in the constitutions of more than 30 US states. Twelve US states and the District of Columbia currently recognize same-sex marriage. 'We are more free' The Doma decision means that legally married gay men and women will have access to the same federal entitlements that are available to opposite-sex married couples. These include tax, health and pension benefits and family hospital visits. The landmark 5-4 rulings prompted celebrations from gay rights advocates outside the Supreme Court in Washington DC and nationwide. The legal challenge to Doma was brought by New York resident Edith Windsor, 83. She was handed a tax bill of $363,000 (£236,000) when she inherited the estate of her spouse Thea Speyer - a levy she would not have had to pay if she had been marriedto a man. "Doma writes inequality into the entire United States Code," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the ruling. "Under Doma, same-sex married couples have their lives burdened, by reason of government decree, in visible and public ways," the decision added. "Doma's principal effect is to identify a subset of state-sanctioned marriages and make them unequal." Lower courts had also decided in Ms Windsor's favour. US President Barack Obama, who is on a state visit to the West African country of Senegal, said: "When all Americans are treated as equal, no matter who they are or whom they love, we are all more free." 'No authority' Proposition 8 is a ban on gay marriage passed by California voters in November 2008, just months after the state's supreme court decided such unions were legal. Two same-sex couples launched a legal challenge against Proposition 8. As the state of California refused to defend it, the group that sponsored the measure stepped up to do so. But on Wednesday, the US Supreme Court said a private party did not have the right, or"standing", to defend the constitutionality of a law. "We have no authority to decide this case on the merits," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the ruling, which was not split along ideological lines. The court also said the party defending the ban could not demonstrate that they would suffer injury if the law were to be struck down. Their opinion leaves in place a ruling by a lower court, in San Francisco, that struck down Proposition 8. California Governor Jerry Brown is ordering country officials statewide to comply. The four dissenting Supreme Court justices said they believed they should have addressed the constitutional question of same-sex marriage before them in the Proposition 8 case. Further litigation could lie ahead for the California ban, analysts say. About 18,000 same-sex couples were married in that state in the less than five months same-sex marriages were permitted there. Doma was signed into law in 1996 by former President Bill Clinton after it was approved in Congress with bipartisan support. But it was subsequently struck down by several lower courts. In 2011, President Obama said that while hew ould continue to enforce Doma, his administration would not defend it in court. So Republicans from the House of Representatives argued in favor of the measure. House Speaker John Boehner, the top Republican in Congress, said he was disappointed with Wednesday's ruling. "A robust national debate over marriage will continue in the public square, and it is my hope that states will define marriage as the union between one man and one woman," he said.
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