Interview with Roberta Kaplan

• Author: Eliot Turner
• Pages: 53-57

53VOL 46 | NO 3 | SPRI NG 2020

Interview with

Roberta Kaplan

ELIOT TURNER

The author is a partner with Norton Rose Fulbright, in Houston, and editor in chief of Litigation.

In 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court held

that the federal Defense of Marriage

Act was unconstitutional. The case

challenging the law was brought by

an octogenarian widow, Edie Windsor,

who was stuck with a tax bill for her

wife’s estate—which wouldn’t have

been the case had federal law al-

lowed her to take the surviving spouse

deduction.

Windsor’s case was argued in the

Supreme Court by Roberta Kaplan,

then a partner at Paul, Weiss in New

York. Kaplan has continued making

news, suing neo-Nazis and others

in the so-called “Alt-Right” for their

role in organizing violent protests in

Charlottesville, as well as Donald Trump for defamation on behalf

of E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her in the 1990s.

She has also since left Paul, Weiss to form her own firm, Kaplan,

Hecker & Fink, where she continues to take on public interest

cases as well as high-stakes commercial litigation. Kaplan and I

spoke by phone in late 2019 about some of the highlights of her

career and challenges facing the legal profession.

Eliot Turner: Many people are fa-

miliar with your work representing

Edie Windsor and the Supreme Court’s

decision in her case, United States v.

Windsor, 570 U.S. 744, which held that

the Defense of Marriage Act, which de-

nied federal recognition of same-sex

marriage, was unconstitutional. But

I wanted to talk about your work on

marriage equality litigation before you

began representing Ms.Windsor. And

specifically your case Samuels v. New

York State Department of Health.

Roberta Kaplan: You got the name

right. Because the case is always

named after Hernandez, which is the

companion case.

ET: [laughter] I actually went on Westlaw to look.

RK: I was going to say thank you for that.

ET: You’re welcome. So the result in Samuels was different

than Windsor. There the New York Court of Appeals held that

New York’s definition of marriage as only between a man and a

Illustration by E lizabeth Traynor