Landmark Supreme Court Rulings - Discrimination Based On Gender

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What is the title and year of this case?
An Oklahoma law prohibited the sale of "nonintoxicating" 3.2 percent beer to males under the age of 21 and to females under the age of 18. Curtis Craig, a male then between the ages of 18 and 21, and a licensed beer vendor challenged the law as discriminatory. Did an Oklahoma statute violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause by establishing different drinking ages for men and women?
In a 7-to-2 decision, the Court held that the statute made unconstitutional gender classifications. The Court held that the statistics relied on by the state of Oklahoma were insufficient to show a substantial relationship between the law and the maintenance of traffic safety. Generalities about the drinking habits of different groups did not help prove the Oklahoma law was constitutional. The Court also found that the Twenty-first Amendment did not alter the application of the Equal Protection Clause in the case.

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Craig v. Boren, 1976

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What is the title and year of this case?
The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) boasted a long and proud tradition as Virginia's only exclusively male public undergraduate higher learning institution. The United States brought suit against Virginia and VMI alleging that the school's male-only admissions policy was unconstitutional insofar as it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. On appeal from a District Court ruling favoring VMI, the Fourth Circuit (Appeals) Court reversed. It found VMI's admissions policy to be unconstitutional. Virginia, in response to the Fourth Circuit's reversal, proposed to create the Virginia Women's Institute for Leadership (VWIL) as a parallel program for women. On appeal from the District Court's affirmation of the plan, the Fourth Circuit ruled that despite the difference in prestige between the VMI and VWIL, the two programs would offer "substantively comparable" educational benefits. The United States appealed to the Supreme Court. Did Virginia's creation of a women's-only academy, as a comparable program to a male-only academy, satisfy the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause? The Supreme Court ruled that, no, Virginia's separation of the sexes in two military academies was unconstitutional. In a 7-to-1 decision, the Court held that VMI's male-only admissions policy was unconstitutional. Because it failed to show "exceedingly persuasive justification" for VMI's gender-biased admissions policy, Virginia violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. Virginia failed to support its claim that single-sex education contributes to educational diversity because it did not show that VMI's male-only admissions policy was created or maintained in order to further educational diversity. Furthermore, Virginia's VWIL could not offer women the same benefits as VMI offered men.

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United States v. Virginia, 1996

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What is the title and year of this case?
Sharron Frontiero, a lieutenant in the United States Air Force, sought a dependent's allowance for her husband. Federal law provided that the wives of members of the military automatically became dependents; husbands of female members of the military, however, were not accepted as dependents unless they were dependent on their wives for over one-half of their support. Frontiero's request for dependent status for her husband was turned down. Did a federal law, requiring different qualification criteria for male and female military spousal dependency, unconstitutionally discriminate against women thereby violating the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause? The Supreme Court ruled that, yes, it did violate the Constitution. The Court held that the statute in question clearly commanded "dissimilar treatment for men and women who are similarly situated," violating the Due Process Clause. Applying a strict standard of review to the sex-based classification, the Court found that the government's interest in administrative convenience could not justify discriminatory practices. The Court held that statutes that drew lines between the sexes on those grounds alone necessarily involved "the 'very kind of arbitrary legislative choice forbidden by the Constitution.'" (Extra credit: who was the only justice to dissent, in this case? He was appointed by President Reagan to be the CHIEF JUSTICE, in spite of - or perhaps because of - his reactionary, 19th-century political and cultural views against women, blacks, and more!)

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The title and date of the case: Frontiero v. Richardson, 1973
The reactionary Associate Justice who dissented in this civil rights case and many others, then was appointed by Reagan to be Chief Justice: William Rehnquist

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What reactionary person wrote this about racial segregation laws, as a Clerk to Supreme Court Associate Justice Jackson, several years before being appointed to the Court, himself, by Richard Nixon?... "I realize that it is an unpopular and unhumanitarian position, for which I have been excoriated by "liberal" colleagues but I think Plessy v. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed.... To the argument ... that a majority may not deprive a minority of its constitutional right, the answer must be made that while this is sound in theory, in the long run it is the majority who will determine what the constitutional rights of the minority are."

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This reactionary was William Rehnquist.