Talk:United States v. Windsor

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Windsor vs other cases[edit]

RE: "In doing so, they argued that Windsor presents a better vehicle than Gill v. Office of Personnel Management or Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management for determining whether section 3 violates the constitution"

The cert petition this sentence refers to makes no mention of those 2 cases. In the MetroWeekly article that discusses it, Windsor's ACLU attorney says "With Edie's case and the two others, the high court has before it..." I don't think there's a claim Windsor is a "better vehicle". Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 23:01, 24 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

That reference to "better vehicle" is in the petition to the Supreme Court itself, which is linked to on that reference, I believe. It states that Windsor is an "excellent vehicle" to settle the constitutional question, if I remember correctly. I can't look at it right now to give you the quote, but it's in the petition for writ of certiorari before judgment. – ツ Teammm (talk · email) 18:14, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Saying this is an excellent vehicle is quite different from "better". I see no claim that this case is in any way more worthy of the court's attention than the others cases that have been the subject of cert petitions. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 19:34, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

First, I'm not the one who did that edit and I'm not defending it. Second, I'm only telling you what the petition says and that they do state that Windsor is an "excellent" vehicle to settle the issue, not "better". However, one could interpret as them stating that it is a better case to accept on the issue because it involves one of the prominent issues with DOMA's discrimination (not only disregarding a state's rights to regulate family law but severely cripples same-sex couples financially unlike their equivalent counterpart couples under the law) If you want to change something, I have no issues with you doing it. – ツ Teammm (talk · email) 19:47, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Already changed, "one could interpret" isn't what we do, and that interpretation would ignore all the financial claims of the Gill plaintiffs. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 20:12, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Didn't say it was, not to the tune of more than a third of a million dollars, and great. – ツ Teammm (talk · email) 20:23, 1 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Move?[edit]

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved. --Malcolmxl5 (talk) 13:40, 10 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

United States v. Windsor → Windsor v. United States – legal cases take the form "plaintiff v. defendant"; Windsor is plaintiff. 71.167.157.25 (talk) 09:31, 2 March 2013 (UTC)--71.167.157.25 (talk) 09:31, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

  • You used "vs" instead of "v" for the second search. Results are actually higher for the latter when both use v (though I don't necessarily believe a raw Google internet search is significant anyway). I am not saying by this that I don't agree this needs discussion, just correcting the record. The IP is correct that legal cases usually take the form Plaintiff(s) v. defendant(s) but that is at the origination court. When you appeal, the caption sometimes but not always changes to list the appealing party first (even if they were the defendant below), and the party designations may become Appellant(s) v. Respondent(s), or Appellant(s) v. Appellee(s).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:45, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Moved from technical move requests, with the above text.
  • Oppose Actually, the United States is the petitioner, that is to say, the one appealing, and it's my strong opinion that the name of this case at the Supreme Court will become the common name relatively quickly if it's not already. Note that the Supreme Court refers to it by the current name, e.g., [1]. --j⚛e deckertalk 19:27, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose To be clear about this, the district court case was called Windsor v. United States. It retained the name in the Court of Appeals because it was an appeal as of right (the existing case just moved from one court to another because at least one party wanted it to). The United States started a new action in the Supreme Court via a petition for writ of certiorari, which requested that the Supreme Court issue a writ of certiorari to the Court of Appeals. A writ of certiorari is an order compelling a lower court to send up the case record to issuing court. The Supreme Court decided to grant the petition, and the writ was issued. Therefore, the Second Circuit's judgment in the case Windsor v. United States is under review in the Supreme Court case United States v. Windsor. That is a technical distinction that only concerns us in so far as the name of the article is concerned. Since the name of the article is exactly what we are talking about, I figured someone should make the full explanation. -Rrius (talk) 23:51, 2 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Label[edit]

The label of the Court of Appelas for the Second Circuit at right side of article must be changed to the label of the US Supreme Court. 217.76.1.22 (talk) 06:48, 2 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's more than just a label. There are two different infoboxes, and I'm not sure whether we deploy the Sup Ct infobox before the decision is handed down. -Rrius (talk) 07:15, 2 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
It's already done in Hollingsworth v. Perry.--В и к и T 07:41, 2 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Thats right, in Hollingsworth it was changed already. 217.76.1.22 (talk) 13:25, 2 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Amendment?[edit]

A user recently changed every instance of Fourteenth Amendment to Fifth Amendment. However, the Windsor case is not mentioned in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution article or the Due Process Clause article, so I was wondering how the Fifth Amendment applies here. Regardless, if the edits are accurate, then this needs to be stated in the article. 216.80.140.25 (talk) 04:20, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Fifth Amendment is correct. The "question presented" to which SCOTUS granted cert is: "Whether Section 3 of DOMA violates the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection of the laws as applied to persons of the same sex who are legally married under the laws of their State." TJRC (talk) 04:28, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. The Supreme Court has held that the Fifth Amendment's guarantee of due process includes a guarantee of equal protection equivalent to that in the Fourteenth Amendment. -Rrius (talk) 05:01, 21 April 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The distinction is obvious. The Fifth Amendment is a restriction on the Federal government. The Fourtheenth Amendment is a restriction on the states. Since the tax exemption at issue is an exemption from Federal tax, clearly the Fifth Amendment would be the applicable one. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Terry Thorgaard (talk • contribs) 02:10, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

As noted above, the case was decided under the Fifth Amendment, not the Fourteenth. Famspear (talk) 23:42, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The case was decided under the Fifth Amendment. However, at least since Bolling v. Sharpe (1954), principles developed in Fourteenth Amendment cases have been applied to the federal government under the Fifth Amendment by analogy. Newyorkbrad (talk) 23:51, 7 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Anniversary of Lawrence v. Texas[edit]

Fun fact: the decision in United States v. Windsor was issued on the ten-year anniversary of the decision in Lawrence v. Texas. This is probably not sufficiently noteworthy for inclusion in the article, but a fun fact for the talk page nonetheless! --MZMcBride (talk) 15:48, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This may be a viable note for a Trivia header. Draeth Darkstar (talk) 22:46, 26 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Ew,no, please let's not introduce a "trivia" section into this article. The anniversary is not that strange of a coincidence. The Court often holds off its decisions in controversial cases to the end of the term, usually late June. There are bound to be some alignment of dates among them, with this type of calendar bunching. TJRC (talk) 00:49, 27 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Reactions from elected officials[edit]

I've read a great many responses from elected officials lately, besides the president. Would a list of those be relevant here? --T smitts (talk) 15:58, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

undue weight of dissents[edit]

I find that the discussion of the opinion gives undue weight to Scalia's dissenting opinion. There's about four or five times as much discussion of why a few of the dissenting judges – only two justices agreed with the second portion of Scalia's dissent, and Alito didn't sign it at all – think the world is coming to an end. There's no discussion of the other dissents. Surely the proposition accepted by the court deserves approximately as much discussion as the argument that was rejected, arguably overwhelmingly? AgnosticAphid talk 18:02, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. The dissents need to be summarized in a concise way. I don't have time to do it. Teammm talk
email 18:12, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Also agreed; the way it's written, it gives the strong appearance of bias in favor of Scalia's dissent not only by the scant treatment given the majority opinion, but also by the failure to mention Roberts' and Alito's separate dissents. Reading this, one would not get the impression that Scalia's work only attracted two other Justices, one of whom did not join the full opinion, or that there were two other dissenting opinions (the Chief's own, and Alito's, joined in part by Thomas). I would go so far as to say that it appears to treat Scalia's dissent as though it should be the majority opinion, and thus fails the bias test. I lack the legal knowledge to rewrite it properly, but I would strongly urge someone who does have that knowledge to please even things out. The Rev (talk) 19:01, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Much as I hate to punt on this as well, I am agreeing wholeheartedly, but unable to edit at this time. I think it should be clear we have a pretty good consensus going, though. I don't read it as overly POV, just outside of due weight. I think someone just spent more time on the dissent than was spent on the majority opinion. Given the scope of the article, though, I don't think the answer is more info on the majority; I agree the dissent needs to be trimmed down.204.65.34.238 (talk) 21:32, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. Regardless of how anyone feels about the ruling, the dissents are where the actual interesting legal questions are. I actually feel the section is pretty well written. — Taterbill (talk • contribs) 22:18, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I respectfully disagree that the quest by same-sex couples for equal dignity under the law is not at least as interesting of a legal question as whether the court is engaging in judicial activism. AgnosticAphid talk 22:49, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
No one has asserted that the quest you speak of is equal or unequal to the questions of the law. The section has simply stated the legal points of one side to the issue, in what i think is an efficient and effective manner. You may have implied that such disparity exists because there is a lack of content that is appropriate and properly referring to the opinion of the majority. That is a failure of content providers, that's not questioning the weight of each side's importance. You shouldn't penalize the other side for it.
Dissenting opinions have absolutely no legal weight; they exist only so that the losing side can whine. A properly neutral article would note that there were three dissenting opinions, note who wrote/signed them, and provide links at the bottom. Nothing more. This is the standard procedure for all other articles on Supreme Court rulings at the Wikipedia, why should this one be singled out for special treatment? TechBear | Talk | Contributions 22:58, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I would agree that is appropriate - however why would it be correct to trim down a section that is factual and informative just because the other section(s) wont be expanded ? 66.108.85.45 (talk) 05:29, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

checkY Agreeing with UNDUE, I've trimmed substantially the excerpts that were not cited by secondary sources. HectorMoffet (talk) 23:35, 28 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to me that every single box is referring verbatim to the opinion linked at the top of the section. Just because a link wasn't created at the end of eery box referring to the exact same document cited at the beginning of the section (which by the way no other part of the article refers to) shouldn't be the measuring stick to use in order to delete what seems to me like excellent content that is both unbiased, sourced, and adding to the topic in a way that no other part of the article does. In other words - do you believe any section of the article, as it currently stands, actually identifies the legal basis for the justices to vote against the plaintiff?? Can you cite and source such section(s)? Now add to the article the section which you deleted, including the citations of the judges' opinion. Can you answer the same exact question now?
If the problem is that the URL is not properly linked, im happy to add those links myself.


i completely disagee. The duty of wikipedia is to inform in a neutral, unbiased way. The dissenting opinion summarized , in its prior form, more than 20 pages of good content into less than 1 on the site. With the media reporting this case as it is, no one would blame a neutral person to not know 1) precedents set by this opinion and 2) the lack of jurisdiction that the dissenting justices argued that drove their decision. The way i see it, as wikipedia is first and foremost a platform to neutrally inform the reader of the whats and the why's, whether the dissenter section is longer or not is irrelevant from a POV point of view. If you feel the sections should be of equal length, thats fine, then cite and explain the majority opinion or otherwise explain why you would trim the opposite section. As of now i've read the entire edit, and it seems strange someone would edit out those pages while still leaving in the original "witch hunt" section which from a legal standpoint is largely irrelevant.

Just because the public is uninformed of what the justices actually ruled on, it doesnt mean they should be uninformed on equal weight on both the majority and minority rulings. As it was written before the edits, the section under dissent was right between joke and shameful wiki article66.108.85.45 (talk) 05:23, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Bottom line, if you are not willing to contribute, you shouldn't blame the other side to doing so in a way that is informative and also adds to the quality of the content.

66.108.85.45 (talk) 05:21, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I just want to point that that User:66.108 appears to be a passionate but Good Faith new user.
68.108, WP:UNDUE doesn't refer to "requiring equal length" as you've thought. It's more about whether a summary is as concise as possible for our readers. It's also about whether specific quotes have been used in WP:Reliable Sources or whether those quotes were arbitrarily chosen by our editors.
No one is saying that the sections have to be precisely equal in length-- if one opinion can be summarized in a paragraph while another opinion requires five times as much space to summarize, that's fine-- IF that's really how long it takes to summarize the decision.
Try not to see this as something specifically against you or the political views you documented. It's just another day on the job-- I add a bunch of text, someone else trims it down, I get really upset about that, but yet yield to the judgment of others editors' opinions and consensus. --HectorMoffet (talk) 06:36, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I truly don't believe its against me, my position, or against the content in the section. I dont think anyone is acting in bad faith. I'm just surprised that we , on wikipedia, are erring on the side of less information is better, particularly when the original document is 77 pages long and written in sometimes arcane legalese. Anyone willing to summarize into less than 1 page (i think the actual writeup was less than 10 sentences if you substract the actual quotations of the opinion) and that also is citing word from word from the opinion should be given a medal- not be deleted because of suspected POV. I just see all that work done, which i dont even think i could do, and i see it going to the deleted bin, and im just completely shocked. Someone has to stand up for that. 66.108.85.45 (talk) 11:00, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I want to clarify-- your work is NOT in the deleted bin-- your version remains on Wikipedia, it always will. You can link people to your version. While the "most recent" article is always in flux, but we don't just "delete" your contributions-- we look back on them as a resource for things we might re-add to the most recent article.
I just hate the feeling when my own hard work is 'deleted', but take solace in the fact that [almost] no edit to wikipedia is ever truly "deleted". --HectorMoffet (talk) 07:54, 1 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

HectorMoffet I appreciate you reaching out to discuss the edits. I think its two separate concerns you are referring to when you say "For me, the biggest problem your work presented was that it wasn't cited to a reliable secondary source If we have 30 pages to summarize, which quotes should we use? " I understand where you are coming from now. Quite frankly, i dont think i have read an actual detailed opinion on the media that directly addresses the points written about in the dissenting section. It may be difficult to source precisely because it seems like a professional (ie paid) source. Most of the media articles summarize without even quoting the opinion of the justices themselves. I'll see what i can find and add accordingly, but lets' be realistic here and agree that this sort of content wont be coming from CNN, FOX or salon.com, which (unless its a think-tank source) will then open the door on whether the source is reputable enough.

In my opinion, precisely because the public is so underinformed on the issues cited by the minority judges (let alone on the actual written content of the opinion itself) that the wiki should read as a scholarly article. And we know scholarly articles (generally) dedicate more time more on researching the facts from the source itself, rather than discussing the commentary of the research by 3rd parties (although it clearly is desirable). Im thinking, that as most articles written on this topic are comprised of commentary without citing what the judges themselves actually wrote, wouldn't it be more wiki-like to add a section that is less opinion, and more fact, directly from the source? Its more than refreshing, its adding value, IMO 66.108.85.45 (talk) 11:48, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You don't need scholarly articles at all. There's quality coverage if you know where to look. Most of what I list here is understandable and not for lawyers only. The key source is SCOTUSblog, both its coverage and its links to quality coverage and commentary. Like:
National Law Journal, esp. pp 2-3
American Constitution Society, just a little but good
Reason.com
CNN Money
some SCOTUSblog coverage
and a whole menu from SCOTUSblog here
You just have to get out of the popular press. Even the New York Times is a start here, esp page 2 and some key quotations here. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 16:25, 29 June 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • Jumping in here a bit late, there is a problem with WP:PRIMARY if we rely too much on the opinion itself. Even just using a quote requires an editorial judgment that the chosen quote is important. I think some would disagree, but I think that if we do too much random quoting with no basis it is a PRIMARY problem because it runs the risk of emphasizing inconsequential parts of rulings. But at any rate, I think everyone would agree that going beyond the quote itself to summarizing the quote is only appropriate in the very clearest of cases. Wikipedia isn't really the place for armchair legal analysis, so its articles about legal topics have to be more like a summary of other law review articles than law review articles themselves. AgnosticAphid talk 18:20, 14 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Only Scalia's dissent is quoteworthy?[edit]

It seems that editors are giving undue weight to Scalia's dissent by drawing several quotes from it, and nothing at all from the other two. TechBear | Talk | Contributions 15:34, 2 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Perfect case of WP:SOFIXIT; Other dissents definitely merit summary. HectorMoffet (talk) 10:25, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I have not been involved in editing this article; it seemed polite to allow those who have been editing the article to give it some thought before wading in. TechBear | Talk | Contributions 22:56, 7 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

United States Reports Citation[edit]

Does anyone know where the citation to the United States Reports (570 U.S. 12) in this article comes from? That citation doesn't work when entered into either Westlaw or Lexis. The latest volume of the U.S. Reports available on the Supreme Court's own website [2] is volume 554. A search on Google Scholar finds no court decision using that cite, only a few articles. PedanticallySpeaking (talk) 15:00, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It was added by an IP editor, [3]. I think it's an error. All the references I can find for it say "570 U.S. ___." One online doc I found [4] refers to it as "570 U.S. 12", but I think that was intended to be "570 U.S. ___, at 12"; the same doc uses "570 U.S. 17" and "570 U.S. 20". I'd expect Lexis and Westlaw to be among the first to have the complete cite. That they don't makes this pretty dubious. Let's go back to "___" until there's a more reliable citation. TJRC (talk) 19:55, 11 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Judicial Interpretation section[edit]

Now that virtually all federal court cases have either ruled on state same-sex marriage bans or are officially on hold (except Guam), we need to address this section. There has been 20 federal rulings invalidating same-sex marriage bans (that were not bound by circuit precedent) and it is of little debate by all political ideologies, that Windsor was key to making these rulings happen the way they did. See Scalia's dissent. As of now this section is a bit too sloppy and needs a clean up. The cases mentioned here are arbitrary and none truly hold much more value than others. Similar to what was done in the section of Loving v. Virginia addressing precedent for same-sex marriage, that type of cleanup is needed here. Important to state how it has made Baker v. Nelson lose its precedent value by most of the federal judges, and good for that to be at the beginning. But the rest needs to be cleaned up. Suggestions on how to structure this? Gabe (talk) 01:39, 12 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The Windsor case was decided in 2013, not 2015[edit]

I notice that since the case of Obergefell v. Hodges was decided on June 26, 2015, several editors have tried to change the date for the Windsor case to "2015". This might be because these people are confusing the two cases, both of which were decided on "June 26" and both of which involved somewhat similar social issues (although not the same legal issues, obviously).

Therefore, please take note:

United States v. Windsor was decided on June 26, 2013 -- NOT June 26, 2015.

Obergefell v. Hodges was decided on June 26, 2015.

Don't confuse the two. Famspear (talk) 02:44, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I added a comment (I put it in the infobox) as it appears you were trying to do; in the source, HTML comments work. HoboMcJoe (talk) 13:33, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! For some reason, I just couldn't get the coding right! Yours, Famspear (talk) 17:51, 29 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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"Skim milk marriage" listed at Redirects for discussion[edit]

Hello,
The page skim milk marriage, which redirects here, has been listed for deletion at Redirects for discussion. You may read and discuss the nomination at that page's entry. Thank-you, Edward-Woodrow (talk) 17:53, 12 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

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