Edith Windsor is runner-up for Time Person of the Year

Edith Windsor, the gay rights activist whose Supreme Court case led to the downfall of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), is a runner-up for Time’s Person of the Year 2013.

Time magazine selected Pope Francis as its Person of the Year Dec. 11, saying the Catholic Church’s new leader has changed the perception of the 2,000-year-old institution in an extraordinary way in a short time.

Windsor came in at #3 on Time’s top ten list of finalists. United States v. Windsor is the landmark case where the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that restricting federal interpretation of “spouse” and “marriage” to apply to only heterosexual couples is unconstitutional. That ruling overturned DOMA and paved the way for federal recognition of same sex marriages.

Windsor and her wife, Thea Spyer, lived in New York and were legally married in Canada. When Spyer died in 2009, she left her entire estate to Windsor, but when Windsor tried to claim federal estate tax exemption for spouses, she was stopped from doing so under DOMA. The IRS charged her more than $300,000 in taxes. United States vs. Windsor was Windsor’s fight in court for a refund on those taxes.

Photo by Robert Maxwell for TIME.

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