Justice Anthony Kennedy announced the court’s 5-4 decision. Justice Kennedy was joined by the four members of the court’s liberal wing—Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—while Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday struck down the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act, which denied federal benefits to lawfully married same-sex couples.

Justice Anthony Kennedy announced the court’s 5-4 decision. Justice Kennedy was joined by the four members of the court’s liberal wing—Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan—while Chief Justice John Roberts dissented, joined by Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The court is set to deliver its opinion shortly on a second case, California’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage.

The court’s majority said the Defense of Marriage Act “violates basic due process and equal protection principles applicable to the Federal Government.”

The rulings were coming amid quickly shifting public opinion on gay rights and gay marriage. A poll this year by the nonpartisan Pew Forum on Religion and Public life found that 50% of Americans support gay marriage, up from 39% in 2008. When Proposition 8 passed in 2008 with 52% of the vote, only two other states permitted gay marriage. Today, 12 states plus the District of Columbia do so.

Moreover, many elected officials and public figures who had previously been noncommittal have thrown their support behind gay marriage. In May 2012, President Barack Obama, who had previously supported civil unions but not full marriage, said he now supported marriage as well. Former President Bill Clinton, who signed the Defense of Marriage Act, now says the measure is a mistake.

In both Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act, the underlying issue is gay marriage, but the specific legal questions differ.

Both cases came to the court in an unusual posture: The federal and state governments that normally would defend their challenged laws agreed with plaintiffs and lower courts that the measures violated the U.S. Constitution.

With the Obama administration declining to defend the Defense of Marriage Act, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives stepped in. And when California’s governor and attorney general offered no defense of Proposition 8, the private citizens who sponsored the initiative came to defend the measure.

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