UNITED STATES V. VIRGINIA

UNITED STATES V. VIRGINIA et al.,518 U.S. 515 (1996) redefined the standard for how state or federal governments determine constitutional and unconstitutional sex discrimination under the Fourteenth Amendment. Previous to this case, the Supreme Court of the United States used an "intermediate" standard of scrutiny to determine that all discrimination based on sex by state and federal government violates the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause, unless the government wishing to discriminate can show "important governmental objectives" for the discrimination, and that the discrimination is "substantially related" to achieving those objectives. The Supreme Court had already set a stricter standard for determining constitutional and unconstitutional discrimination based on race or national origin in 1976. The Court, however, had refused to institute the same strict standard for discrimination based on sex.

This case potentially raised the intermediate standard for sex discrimination closer to the strict standard for race and nationality discrimination by stating that, if the government of Virginia wished to discriminate based on sex, it must show an "exceedingly persuasive justification" rather than a "substantially related" justification. The Supreme Court found that the Virginia Military Institute, a state-funded, all male, military style, collegiate institution, could no longer deny women admission. The Court found that Virginia violated the Fourteenth Amendment under the Court's newly articulated sex discrimination standard, because Virginia's governmental objectives of single-sex educational benefits and diversity of education were not "exceedingly persuasive justification" for excluding women. They also found that the creation of a military-influenced program at a private women's college was an insufficient remedy.

The seven to one majority opinion by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was written narrowly, and did not explicitly adopt the strict scrutiny standard for sex discrimination cases. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, it was uncertain whether the Court would use the newly articulated higher standard for determining unconstitutional and constitutional sex discrimination in other cases.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ayres, Ian. Pervasive Prejudice? Unconventional Evidence of Race and Gender Discrimination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Baer, Judith A. Women in American Law. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1991.

Falk, Gerhard. Sex, Gender, and Social Change: The Great Revolution. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1998. Sunstein, Cass R. One Case at a Time: Judicial Minimalism on the Supreme Court. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Akiba J.Covitz

Esa LianneSferra

Meredith L.Stewart

See alsoDiscrimination: Sex ; Equal Protection under the Law .