Gay rights pioneer who helped end same-sex marriage ban dies

NEW YORK — Edith Windsor, a gay rights pioneer whose landmark Supreme Court case struck down parts of a federal anti-gay-marriage law and paved a path toward legalizing samesex nuptials nationwide, died Tuesday. She was 88.

Windsor died in New York, said her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan.

Windsor was 81 when she brought a lawsuit after the 2009 death of her first spouse, Thea Spyer. The women had married legally in Canada in 2007 after spending over 40 years together. Windsor said the federal Defense of Marriage Act’s definition of marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman prevented her from getting a marital deduction on Spyer’s estate. That meant Windsor faced a $360,000 tax bill that heterosexual couples would not have.