LGBT activist Edith Windsor dies at 88

LGBT rights activist Edith Windsor, the lead plaintiff in the landmark Supreme Court case that struck down the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), died in Manhattan on Tuesday at the age of 88.

Windsor’s wife, Judith Kasen-Windsor, confirmed her passing to The New York Times on Tuesday. Her court case surrounded a tax refund that she applied for after her first wife, Thea Spyer, passed away in 2009. In 2013, she took her fight to the Supreme Court.

In 2013, the Supreme Court decided 5-4 in United States v. Windsor that the federal government cannot deny spousal benefits to same-sex couples, striking down several federal provisions under DOMA in the process.

{mosads}“DOMA undermines both the public and private significance of state-sanctioned same-sex marriages; for it tells these couples, and all the world, that their otherwise valid marriages are unworthy of federal recognition,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion.

The Windsor decision applied to just 13 states and the District of Columbia, but two years later the Supreme Court would again expand rights to same-sex couples by legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.

The Supreme Court decision turned Windsor into a celebrity, especially among LGBT rights activists. Windsor was a grand marshal of New York City’s LGBT Pride March in April of this year and came in second to Pope Francis for Time magazine’s person of the year in 2013.