The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. ___ (2013),ratcheted up an already rapidly evolving legal environment for same-sex marriage in Pennsylvania. Having temporarily suspended his ruling pending the Supreme Court's decision, U.S. District Judge C. Darnell Jones II of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania rendered a decision on Cozen O'Connor v. Tobits, No. 11-0045,shortly after the release of Windsor. Jones ruled in favor of Jennifer Tobits, the same-sex spouse of a deceased Cozen O'Connor attorney, declaring her the spouse beneficiary of the deceased's profit-sharing plan. Though the opinion was narrowly construed to avoid Pennsylvania law, it was nevertheless an example of the federal court interpreting a federal statute (the Employee Retirement Income Security Act) to be "gender neutral" in its definition of "spouse."
The Windsor decision bolstered the filing of Whitewood v. Corbett. On July 9, the American Civil Liberties Union, with volunteer counsel from Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller, filed a complaint in the Middle District of Pennsylvania on behalf of 23 Pennsylvanians.
