11 Jubilant Photos of Edie Windsor Changing the Course of Marriage Equality Forever

Her courage changed the world.

A pioneer of civil rights, Edie Windsor has died at age 88, but her legacy has changed the lives of LGBT people forever after winning her landmark Supreme Court case that paved the way for full marriage equality. Windsor married Thea Spyer, her partner of 44 years, in Canada in 2007, but the United States failed to recognize their marriage, so when Spyer died two years later, Windsor was hit with $363,000 in estate taxes that she would not have been forced to pay if they had been an opposite-sex couple. So she sued, and her case went all the way to the Supreme Court and helped to shatter the case against marriage equality. On the following pages are photos of Windsor in March of 2013 when the Supreme Court heard arguments in her case and in June of that year when the decision came down that she had won.