For now, the ruling from the court today is a great victory for gay-rights advocates. It would have been unheard of less than ten years ago to think that one could get a federal appeals court—and an important one—to rule so broadly in favor of the rights of gay Americans. That it is also a victory for Edie Windsor, an eighty-three-year-old widow who was determined to fight, makes it all the sweeter. She has said, “It’s so hard to say why it matters, why marriage is different. But marriage is different. It has to do with our dignity altogether.”

Julie Bolger unpacks the decision:

[T]he Second Circuit became the first federal appeals court to hold that laws that classify individuals based on sexual orientation should receive a more exacting level of judicial review, known as “heightened scrutiny.” The First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, which ruled DOMA unconstitutional in the Gill case last May, did not apply heightened scrutiny.

Scott Lemieux drills down: