Opinion ID: 775824
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Scope of the Constitutional Right at Issue

Text: 27 The first step in the congruence and proportionality inquiry is to identify with some precision the scope of the constitutional right at issue. Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 963. The United States defends §§ 2612(a)(1)(C) on the ground that it is meant to remedy and prevent unconstitutional gender discrimination. 8 The argument is supported by the text of the FMLA. See 29 U.S.C. §§ 2601(a)(5) (Congress finds that . . . due to the nature of the roles of men and women in our society, the primary responsibility for family caretaking often falls on women, and such responsibility affects the working lives of women more than it affects the working lives of men . . . .); id. §§ 2601(b)(4) (It is the purpose of this Act . . . to accomplish [the Act's previously described purposes ] in a manner that, consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, minimizes the potential for employment discrimination on the basis of sex by ensuring generally that leave is available for eligible medical reasons (including maternity-related disability) and for compelling family reasons, on a gender-neutral basis . . . .). 28 The United States argues that because women are regarded as having the primary responsibility for family caretaking (both for infants and for sick family members), employers commonly offer less caretaking leave to men than to women. The United States further concludes that this kind of gender-discriminatory leave policy is harmful both to men -because they are not given enough leave to care for their families -and to women -because reduced leave for men forces women to spend more time taking care of their families, and women's consequently greater needs for caretaking leave make them less attractive job candidates than men. Additionally, as we explain later, it appears that in enacting the FMLA Congress was also striving, in light of a long history of unconstitutional legislation mandating stereotypical family roles, to remedy the gender-discriminatory impact of employer policies that provide no family leave at all. The statute aims to remedy all these forms of discrimination by setting a gender-neutral minimum standard for the granting of caretaking leave. Cf. Laro, 259 F.3d at 12 (noting that the argument in support of a valid Eleventh Amendment waiver is stronger with respect to the parental and family-care leave provisions than it is with respect to personal medical leave). 29 State-sponsored gender discrimination is subject tointermediate scrutiny under the Equal Protection Clause. Such discrimination is thus unconstitutional unless it is substantially related to the achievement of an important governmental interest. See, e.g., Wengler v. Druggists Mut. Ins. Co., 446 U.S. 142, 150 (1980) ([O]ur precedents require that genderbased discriminations must serve important governmental objectives and that the discriminatory means employed must be substantially related to the achievement of those objectives.). In addition, the burden is on the defender of such discrimination to prove that the standard has been met. See, e.g., Kirchberg v. Feenstra, 450 U.S. 455, 461 (1981) ([T]he burden remains on the party seeking to uphold a statute that expressly discriminates on the basis of sex to advance an exceedingly persuasive justification for the challenged classification. (internal quotation marks omitted)); Wengler, 446 U.S. at 151 (The burden . . . is on those defending the discrimination to make out the claimed justification . . . .). 30 This allocation of the burden of proof has the effect of creating a rebuttable presumption of unconstitutionality for statesponsored gender discrimination. This contrasts sharply with the treatment of age and disability classifications, which are subject to rational basis review. The burden is entirely on the challenger of state-sponsored age or disability discrimination to prove that the discrimination is not rationally related to any conceivable legitimate governmental interest. See Garrett, 121 S. Ct. at 964 ([T]he burden is upon the challenging party to negative any reasonably conceivable state of facts that could provide a rational basis for the classification. (internal quotation marks omitted)); Kimel, 528 U.S. at 84 ([T]he individual challenging [the discrimination] bears the burden of proving that the facts on which the classification is apparently based could not reasonably be conceived to be true by the governmental decisionmaker. (internal quotation marks omitted)). In this way, such classifications are presumptively constitutional. 31 Judicial application of heightened scrutiny to statesponsored gender discrimination is justified largely on the basis of the following analysis: (1) Gender differences are so seldom relevant to the achievement of any legitimate state interest that laws grounded in such considerations are deemed to reflect prejudice and antipathy, Kimel , 528 U.S. at 83 (internal quotation marks omitted) (contrasting race and gender with age); and (2) Individuals who suffer discrimination on the basis of gender have been subjected to a history of purposeful unequal treatment, id. (internal quotation marks omitted) (contrasting race and gender with age). 32