Three months to the day after the justices heard historic arguments on California's Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act, and on the last of its decision days for an already historic Spring term, the Supreme Court will rule on the two same-sex marriages cases on Wednesday, Chief Justice John Roberts announced on the second-to-last day, minutes after issuing the majority opinion on the Voting Rights Act. Yes, after none of the first 72 decisions were the ones perhaps more people were waiting for than even the VRA or Monday's affirmative action ruling, the wait will finally be over — and June 26, 2013 officially becomes one of the most important dates in America's difficult history with civil rights, whether the tea leaves prove true with a chaotic split, or whether that history is instantly definitive. 
 
 The announcement came on Tuesday, after the Court issued what the NAACP called "a step backwards in the march towards equal rights." But the penultimate decision day has tended to be when Roberts, in his time as the chief, announces that the following day will indeed be the last, and with just three cases left on the docket, Prop. 8 and DOMA must be among the final boxes. As the always reliable SCOTUSblog reported: 
 
 Tomorrow is the last #scotus day. Same-sex marriage. History. — SCOTUSblog (@SCOTUSblog) June 25, 2013 
 
 History indeed. On Wednesday shortly after 10 a.m. Eastern time, same-sex couples will find out if they can legally get married in this country in a possible end to the five-year fight against Proposition 8 (Hollingsworth v. Perry) in California and beyond. With DOMA (United States v. Windsor), there remains more wiggle room, and the Court could punt or send the case back down to the lower court like it did in the affirmative-action case Fisher v. Texas. Here's a handy flowchart or two if you're not all up to date by now, though you're probably sick of having this explained to you already. 
 
 The rulings might not come down right after 10, though, as there's actually one more case to be ruled on Wednesday, which is likely to be the opening act. Rulings are announced based on the seniority of the justice issuing the majority ruling, and Sekhar v. United States could be just that, as the Supremes decide whether or not a lawyer's advice or "recommendation" can be the subject of blackmail, as SCOTUS blog explains, "intangible property that can be the subject of an extortion attempt" under the Hobbs act. It also involves a saucy extramarital affair. 
 
 There remains little-to-no possibility that the Court would carry the gay marriage cases to its next term, when the two linked opinions would be re-argued. That only happens if there are major outstanding issues regarding the cases, and lawyers would then be contacted with more questions. And while "standing" itself may be a big issue, there were only two big questions left in this one: How soon, and what will be our history? One down, one to go. 
 
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 Alexander Abad-Santos ||||| WASHINGTON — It is usually impossible to say when the Supreme Court will announce any particular decision. There is one exception: On the last day of the term, when the court takes action on every remaining case, the process of elimination supplies the answer. 
 
 The last day of the term is Wednesday. The court has yet to issue decisions in two momentous cases on same-sex marriage. 
 
 Those facts in combination mean that shortly after 10 a.m. the justices will announce their rulings on challenges to two laws that define marriage to include only unions of a man and a woman. 
 
 One case, from New York, concerns the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996, which denies federal benefits to gay and lesbian couples married in states that allow such unions. 
 
 The other, from California, challenges Proposition 8, the state’s ban on same-sex marriage. 
 
 The rulings will come against the backdrop of a rapid shift in public attitudes about same-sex marriage, with recent polls indicating that a majority of Americans support allowing such unions. When the justices heard arguments in the two cases in March, nine states and the District of Columbia had laws allowing same-sex marriage. Since then, three more states have enacted such laws. 
 
 The New York case, United States v. Windsor, No. 12-307, challenges the part of the 1996 law that defines marriage as between only a man and a woman for the purposes of more than 1,000 federal laws and programs. (Another part of the law, not before the court, says that states need not recognize same-sex marriages from other states.) 
 
 The case concerns two New York City women, Edith Windsor and Thea Clara Spyer, who married in 2007 in Canada. Ms. Spyer died in 2009, and Ms. Windsor inherited her property. The 1996 law did not allow the Internal Revenue Service to treat Ms. Windsor as a surviving spouse, and she faced a tax bill of about $360,000 that would not have applied to a spouse in an opposite-sex marriage. 
 
 Ms. Windsor sued, and last year the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, struck down the 1996 law. 
 
 Should the justices strike down the law, married same-sex couples would start to receive federal benefits. Should they uphold the law, the current state of affairs for married same-sex couples – Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called it “skim milk marriage” when the case was argued in March – would continue. 
 
 No ruling in the case on the 1996 law would require states without same-sex marriage to adopt it. 
 
 The case is procedurally tangled. The Obama administration argued that the law is unconstitutional, though it continues to enforce it. House Republicans intervened to defend the law, though it is not clear that they were entitled to represent the interests of the United States. 
 
 That leaves the possibility that no party before the Supreme Court had standing to challenge the appeals court’s decision. 
 
 The California case, Hollingsworth v. Perry, No. 12-144, was filed in 2009 by Theodore B. Olson and David Boies, two lawyers who were on opposite sides in the Supreme Court’s decision in Bush v. Gore, which settled the 2000 presidential election. The suit, brought on behalf of two same-sex couples, argued that California voters had violated the federal Constitution the previous year when they overrode a decision of the state’s Supreme Court allowing same-sex marriage. 
 
 Lower federal courts agreed with Mr. Olson and Mr. Boies, striking down Proposition 8. 
 
 The justices have several options in the California case. They could reverse the appeals court, leaving California’s ban on same-sex marriage in place. They could affirm the appeals court’s ruling on a theory that would allow same-sex marriage only in California. Or they could address the broader question of whether the Constitution requires states to allow such marriages. 
 
 It is also possible that the court will give no answer on the merits, deciding instead that it was powerless to hear the case because no party before it was entitled to appeal from the decisions of the lower courts. (The California officials who lost in the lower courts declined to appeal. Supporters of the ballot initiative did appeal, but it is not clear that they were entitled to step into the government’s shoes to do so.) 
 
 That last option – dismissal on standing grounds, or something similar — would lead to short-term confusion, but many legal experts say they expect it would result in same-sex marriage returning to California in a matter of weeks. ||||| Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters 
 
 They release cases as each is ready, but they space out the bombshells. The justice representing the majority tells the chief justice when all of the opinions in a case are finished. The chief then decides when to announce the ruling. Usually, the opinions are handed down on the following Monday or Thursday—the traditional decision days—provided the printing office can have the slip opinion ready. Landmark cases, however, receive special treatment. The court is sensitive to journalists’ ability to report multiple important decisions in a single day and the public’s capacity to absorb them. (All decisions were handed down on Mondays until 1965, when veteran Supreme Court reporter Anthony Lewis complained to Chief Justice Earl Warren that reporters couldn’t handle the volume.) The court now tends to issue only one landmark ruling per day, and often issues opinions on consecutive days at the end of a term to space out major cases. There may be four decision days this week, because of the unusually large pileup of significant cases. The gay marriage decision could come Wednesday or Thursday. 
 
 That means the Supreme Court is either holding back the decision on the Defense of Marriage Act (so as to stagger DOMA, the Voting Rights Act, and affirmative action), or the justices are still working on it. Supreme Court insiders say it’s not unusual for the justices and their clerks to work until the last minute on complex cases. Fisher, the affirmative action decision announced Monday, is a good example. Decisions in most of the other cases argued in October 2012 were announced long ago, some as early as November. Fisher, however, bears all the hallmarks of a compromise decision: The justices allowed colleges to continue considering diversity as an admissions factor but ordered lower courts to subject such programs to higher scrutiny. Justice Anthony Kennedy, who opposed affirmative action in two landmark decisions in 2003, may have written a more sweeping opinion that failed to garner a majority, forcing him back to the drawing board and delaying the decision for months. 
 
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 The chief occasionally uses his scheduling authority strategically, lobbying his fellow justices as he postpones announcing the majority opinion. In 1960, 12 African-American students were arrested during a sit-in at a whites-only Baltimore restaurant. The students appealed their subsequent trespass convictions to the U.S. Supreme Court, because the state banned segregation in restaurants after they were arrested. Justice Hugo Black wrote the initial majority opinion upholding the convictions, and he demanded that Chief Justice Warren hand down the decision immediately. Warren, however, stalled for time, while Black fumed impotently. Eventually, Warren and Justice William Brennan peeled off enough votes to remand the case to the Maryland courts for reconsideration. 
 
 By holding finished decisions back, the chief justice takes a calculated risk—the longer a case lingers, the higher the likelihood of leaks. The Supreme Court has historically been a low-leak environment, though. When former clerks have had the temerity to discuss the court’s inner workings, as some did after the Bush v. Gore decision, they have faced significant criticism. Still, if you’re interested in a particular decision and you know a Supreme Court clerk, he might drop a hint about which day you should hang around the court. 
 
 Got a question about today’s news? Ask the Explainer. ||||| How the Court Could Rule on Same-Sex Marriage 
 
 The Supreme Court is set to release decisions in two cases about same-sex marriage. While hearings in March on California‚Äôs ban on gay marriage were murky, hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act were more clear, as the justices seemed ready to strike down a central part of the act that bans federal benefits to gay spouses.
– It's a day for the history books: Two landmark Supreme Court rulings on gay marriage are coming today, something we know with certainty because it's the last day of the term. The justices will convene at 10am ET and issue their rulings shortly thereafter, reports the New York Times. A quick primer on what to expect: One case: DOMA. DOMA defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, meaning that gay couples who legally wed in states that allow gay marriage are denied federal benefits. The high court must decide if the federal government can constitutionally do that. (More on the lesbian couple the case involves here.) What could happen here: If DOMA is struck down, the federal benefits would start flowing to affected couples; if it's upheld, things will remain as they are. The court could also punt by saying that House Republicans do not have the standing to defend the law in the first place. The court sounded pretty skeptical during its oral arguments on the case three months ago, with SCOTUSBlog putting the chance of DOMA's demise at 80%. Second case, Prop 8: California's voter-approved Prop 8 banned same-sex marriage after the state Supreme Court allowed it. A federal district judge struck down Prop 8, but his decision was stayed until the Supreme Court could weigh in. What could happen here: There are more possible outcomes in this case. The court could uphold Prop 8, determine it is powerless to hear the case (more on that here), or strike Prop 8 down. Should the justices go with the third option, their ruling could go one of three ways, as explained here. Most narrowly, such a decision would affect only California. Most broadly, they could deem all bans on gay marriage unconstitutional. You may have to wait a few minutes past 10am: The AtlanticWire notes that there's a third ruling coming today, and that'll likely be first in line. Today's best sidebar: This Slate piece on how, and why, the Supreme Court schedules its decisions the way it does. Interesting side note: The Times observes that when the justices heard arguments in the cases in March, gay marriage was legal in nine states, plus DC. In the months since, three more states have joined that group.