Before Pride Month comes to a close, it’s worth taking a moment to recognize a landmark anniversary. On June 26, 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, making marriage equality the law of the land. Like many historic rulings, it began with one person and one very human request.
The story behind the case
Jim Obergefell and John Arthur had been together for more than two decades. They built a life in Ohio, and by every measure that matters to a family, they were married long before any court was willing to say so.
Then John was diagnosed with ALS. As his health declined, the couple decided not to wait any longer. In the summer of 2013 they flew to Maryland, one of the states that recognized same-sex marriage at the time, and married inside a medical transport plane on the tarmac. They returned home married in the eyes of one state, but unmarried in the eyes of their home state.
John died a few months later. When it came time to prepare his death certificate, Ohio refused to list Jim as the surviving spouse. After more than twenty years together and a lawful marriage, the state would record John as single.
That refusal set everything in motion. Jim did not set out to change the country. He set out to be named on the document that recorded the end of the life he had shared.
From Ohio to the Supreme Court
At the time, marriage recognition was a patchwork. A couple could be fully married in one state and legal strangers the moment they crossed a border. Jim’s lawsuit was one of several moving through the federal courts, all asking the same question. When the cases reached the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, the court upheld the marriage bans in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky, and Tennessee.
That decision created a split among the federal courts, and the Supreme Court agreed to step in. The question was direct: does the Fourteenth Amendment require states to license marriages between same-sex couples, and to recognize same-sex marriages lawfully performed in other states?
The decision
On June 26, 2015, the Court answered yes.
By a vote of 5 to 4, with Justice Anthony Kennedy writing for the majority, the Court held that the right to marry is a fundamental liberty protected by the Due Process and Equal Protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that this protection extends to same-sex couples just as it does to everyone else.
The ruling did two things at once. It required every state to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and it required every state to recognize same-sex marriages performed elsewhere. The patchwork was gone. A marriage valid in one state was now valid in all of them.
For Jim Obergefell, it meant his name would finally appear where it belonged.
What it changed
Obergefell changed countless lives overnight. Couples who had waited years could marry in their home state, with the same legal standing as anyone else.
It is worth pausing on what the ruling secured and what it did not. Marriage carried a long list of automatic protections, from inheritance rights to the ability to make medical decisions for a spouse. Those defaults were hard won, and they matter.
But a marriage license has never been a complete plan. Defaults are also, by design, general. A marriage license cannot account for a blended household, children from a prior relationship, a chosen family the law does not automatically recognize, or the particular wishes a person holds for their own legacy.
Legal recognition is a beginning. The families who feel most secure tend to be the ones who have put their wishes in writing and named the people they trust.
Someone I knew
This case is personal for me, and not only because it was a victory for people I care about. It is personal because of someone who helped win it.
David Codell and I were high school classmates in Florida. He was our graduating class valedictorian. We were never particularly close, and after graduation our paths simply never crossed again. But in hindsight, he could well be the most effortlessly brilliant person I have ever known. And his career turned out to be extraordinary.
David went to Harvard College and Harvard Law School, clerked for Judge David S. Tatel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit and then for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg of the U.S. Supreme Court, and practiced constitutional law alongside Harvard Law professor Laurence H. Tribe before becoming a partner at a major Los Angeles firm and, in 2003, opening his own office.
In 2014 he became Constitutional Litigation Director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, where he litigated marriage-equality cases in Utah, Alabama, Florida, Idaho, and Tennessee. The Tennessee case was one of those folded into Obergefell—the very ruling that secured the constitutional right to marry for same-sex couples across the country.
David died on May 7, 2026, at his home in Los Angeles. He was 57, and he is survived by José Vega-Villeda, whom his family called the love of his life. There is something quietly fitting in that: a man who spent years securing the freedom to marry, remembered first for the person he loved. He is remembered, too, for decades of pro bono work that advanced civil rights for people he would never meet.
It is humbling to think that someone I went to high school with helped shape a ruling that protects families my law firm serves today. David’s work is part of why this story matters to me.
Why we tell this story during Pride
Jim Obergefell fought to be named as a husband on a single document. A decade later, every family can decide for themselves who is named, who decides, and who is protected. That is worth celebrating this month and every month—and worth honoring in the people, like David, who made it possible.
For more on Texas estate planning, and to learn about estate planning lawyer Tom Misteli and The Misteli Law Firm, visit www.mistelilaw.com.
