Editor’s Note: We’ll have more tonight at 8 and 11 p.m. ET on the Supreme Court’s rulings. Senior Legal Analyst Jeffrey Toobin will join Anderson, as will columnist Andrew Sullivan and Jean Podrasky, Chief Justice John Roberts' gay cousin will react to today's rulings along with her partner.

Today, voting 5-4, the U.S. Supreme Court threw out part of the Defense of Marriage Act, a law that denied hundreds of federal benefits to same-sex couples. The high court said legally married same-sex couples must receive the same benefits provided to heterosexual couples. The act had defined marriage as only between a man and a woman, but the court said the law violated the rights of same-sex couples by demoting their marriages to second-class status when compared to their heterosexual peers.

In another landmark case, the justices, in a 5 to 4 decision, also handed a victory to same-sex proponents when it cleared the way for gay and lesbian couples to marry in California, dismissing an appeal to the state's voter-approved Proposition 8 that banned such marriages.

The Supreme Court sided on Tuesday with adoptive parents in a divisive custody fight over a Native American child after the biological father asserted his parental rights. The justices, by a 5-4 margin, said the adoption by a white couple was proper and did not intrude on the federal rights of the father, a registered member of the Cherokee tribe, over where his daughter, Veronica, 3, would live. The court said the father could not rely on the Indian Child Welfare Act for relief because he never had legal or physical custody at the time of adoption proceedings, which were initiated by the birth mother without his knowledge.

These decisions were made by the highest court in the nation.

Here’s the AC360 411 on the U.S. Supreme Court: FULL POST