A complaint filed this month against FedEx Corporation and its pension plan asks a court to apply the Supreme Court’s decision in Windsor v. United States retroactively.  The case is Schuett v. FedEx Corporation.  The plaintiff is the surviving same-sex spouse of a FedEx pension plan participant who died six days before the Court issued its opinion in Windsor.

Case background.  The participant and the plaintiff began living as a couple in 1983.  The participant worked as a FedEx delivery driver for 26 years while the plaintiff stayed home to care for the couple’s two children.  The participant was diagnosed with cancer and learned on June 3, 2013, that her condition was terminal.  Already registered as domestic partners in California, the couple held a bedside wedding ceremony June 19, 2013, and the participant died the following day.

Six days later, the Supreme Court held in Windsor that the U.S. Constitution requires federal law to recognize state-sanctioned same-sex marriages.  The Court overturned section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (“DOMA”), which defined marriage under federal law to exclude same-sex couples.  The same day, the Court decided Hollingsworth v. Perry, a procedural ruling that effectively reinstated same-sex marriage in California.  The plaintiff obtained a marriage certificate and a judicial order declaring the couple’s marriage legally valid as of June 19, 2013.
Continue Reading Lawsuit by Surviving Same-Sex Spouse Raises Windsor Retroactivity Question