United States v . Virginia United States v . Virginia , , is a 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 . ) Decision and Rationale . Writing for the majority , Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg stated that because VMI failed to show " exceedingly persuasive justification " for its sex - based 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 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 1950 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 . In her opinion , she stated that " The VWIL program is a pale shadow of VMI in terms of the range of curricular choices and faculty stature , funding , prestige , alumni support and influence . " Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote a concurrence agreeing to strike down the male - only admissions policy of the Virginia Military Institute , as violative of the Fourteenth Amendment ' s Equal Protection Clause . However , he declined to join the majority opinion ' s basis for using the Fourteenth Amendment , writing : " Had Virginia made a genuine effort to devote comparable public resources to a facility for women , and followed through on such a plan , it might well have avoided an equal protection violation . " This rationale supported separate but equal facilities separated on the basis of sex : " it is not the ' exclusion of women ' that violates the Equal Protection Clause , but the maintenance of an all - men school without providing any - - much less a comparable - - institution for women . . . It would be a sufficient remedy , I think , if the two institutions offered the same quality of education and were of the same overall caliber . " 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 sex . Notably , however , the opinion for the Court eschewed either standard ; its language did not comport with the " important governmental interest " formula used in prior intermediate scrutiny cases . 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 university in the United States .