In a victory for marriage equality, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on Wednesday that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)–a federal law that deprived legally married same-sex couples of benefits given to other married couples–is unconstitutional and “a deprivation of equal liberty.”

Writing the majority opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “DOMA is unconstitutional as a deprivation of the equal liberty of persons that is protected by the Fifth Amendment.”

He continued:

DOMA singles out a class of persons deemed by a State entitled to recognition and protection to enhance their own liberty. It imposes a disability on the class by refusing to acknowledge a status the State finds to be dignified and proper. DOMA instructs all federal officials, and indeed all persons with whom same-sex couples interact, including their own children, that their marriage is less worthy than the marriages of others. The federal statute is invalid, for no legitimate purpose overcomes the purpose and effect to disparage and to injure those whom the State, by its marriage laws, sought to protect in personhood and dignity. By seeking to displace this protection and treating those persons as living in marriages less respected than others, the federal statute is in violation of the Fifth Amendment.

Kennedy was joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor and Kagan.

Cheering the ruling, Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, said that the “the justices have affirmed that all married couples are equal, ending the ‘gay exception’ that relegated same-sex couples to second-class status for too long. Married couples – gay or non-gay – should be treated as what they are: married.”

“The Supreme Court’s mortal blow to DOMA puts the moral weight of the federal government on the side of all Americans who seek to share in the freedom to marry and all its protections and responsibilities,” stated Wolfson.\

Click here for the full story.