Windsor is a widow who had a legal same-sex marriage under Canada and New York law, but was denied spousal deduction for federal estate taxes when her wife died. Prior to her challenge, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) [official website] announced that it would no longer defend DOMA in courts and, in response, members of the House formed [JURIST reports] the Bipartisan Legal Advisory Group (BLAG) to defend the law. In July,132 members of the House who support the law's constitutionality filed an amicus brief [JURIST report] in another case arguing that statutory classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to heightened judicial scrutiny and that DOMA should be overturned as unconstitutional under any level of judicial scrutiny. The brief was filed in the appeal of Karen Golinski v. Office of Personnel Management, the landmark case in which the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website] ruled that DOMA is unconstitutional [JURIST report]. In June, 10 US senators filed their own amicus brief in the case, arguing in the opposite [JURIST report] that the federal government had a legitimate interest in creating a uniform federal definition of marriage to "[avoid] massive legal uncertainty."