|
| |
January 17
|
| |
1996
|
| |
June 26
|
| |
1996
|
| |
United States, Petitioner v Virginia, et al
|
| |
518
|
| |
515
|
| |
116 S Ct 2264 135 L Ed 2d 735 1996 US LEXIS 4259 64 USLW 4638 96 Cal Daily Op Service 4694 96 Daily Journal DAR 7573 10 Fla L Weekly Fed S 93
|
| |
Judgment for defendants, 766 F Supp 1407 (WD Va 1991) vacated, 976 F2d 890 (4th Cir 1992), certiorari denied, 508 US 946 (1993, on remand, judgment for defendants, 852 F Supp 471 (WD Va 1994), aff'd, 44 F3d 1229 (4th Cir 1995), motion for rehearing en banc denied, 52 F3d 90 (4th Cir 1995), certiorari granted ___ US ____ (1995)
|
| |
State of Virginia's exclusion of women from the Virginia Military Institute violated Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment
|
| |
1994-2005
|
| |
Ginsburg
|
| |
Stevens, O'Connor, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer
|
| |
Rehnquist
|
| |
Scalia
|
| |
Thomas
|
| |
US Const Amend XIV
|
'', , is case in which the
Supreme Court Of The United States struck down the
Virginia Military Institute 's long-standing
Male-only Admission Policy in a 7-1 decision. (Justice
Clarence Thomas Recused himself from the case, presumably because his son was enrolled at VMI at the time.)
Writing for the majority, Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that because
VMI failed to show "exceedingly persuasive justification" for its gender-biased admissions policy, it violated the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection clause. In an attempt to satisfy equal protection requirements, the state of
Virginia had proposed a so-called "
Separate But Equal " parallel program for women, called the
Virginia Women's Institute For Leadership (VWIL), located at
Mary Baldwin College , a private liberal arts
Women's College .
However, Justice Ginsburg held that the VWIL would not provide women with the same type of rigorous military training, facilities, courses, faculty, financial opportunities, and/or alumni reputation and connections that VMI affords male cadets, a decision evocative of
Sweatt V. Painter , when the Court ruled in 1946 that segregated law schools in
Texas were unconstitutional, since a newly-formed black law school clearly did not provide the same benefits to its students as the state's prestigious and long-maintained white law school.
Justice
Scalia's lone dissent argued that the standard applied by the majority was closer to a
Strict Scrutiny standard than the
Intermediate Scrutiny standard applied to previous cases involving equal protection based on gender. Scalia argued that "if the question of the applicable standard of review for sex-based classifications were to be regarded as an appropriate subject for reconsideration, the stronger argument would be not for elevating the standard to strict scrutiny, but for reducing it to rational-basis review."
With the VMI decision, the high court effectively struck down any law which, as Justice Ginsburg wrote, "denies to women, simply because they are women, full citizenship stature — equal opportunity to aspire, achieve, participate in and contribute to society."
Following the ruling, VMI contemplated going private to exempt itself from the 14th Amendment, and thus this ruling. The Department of Defense warned the school that it would withdraw all
ROTC programs from the school if this privatization took place. As a result of the DOD action, Congress amended 10 USC 2111a, to prohibit the military from withdrawing or diminishing any ROTC program at one of the six
Senior Military College s, including VMI. However, VMI's Board of Visitors had already voted 8-7 to admit women and did not revisit the issue after the law was amended.
VMI was the last all-male public school in the United States.
