Opinion ID: 579192
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Gender Cases

Text: This conclusion was not new with Metro. In a long line of gender cases, the Court has made clear that the underlying purpose of the legal test that requires a gender classification to be substantially related to important objectives is to make sure that the government is not making distinctions between men and women based on archaic and stereotypic notions. Mississippi University for Women v. Hogan, 458 U.S. 718, 725, 102 S.Ct. 3331, 3336, 73 L.Ed.2d 1090 (1982). As Justice O'Connor wrote for the Court: The purpose of requiring that close relationship [between means and ends] is to assure that the validity of a classification is determined through reasoned analysis rather than through the mechanical application of traditional, often inaccurate assumptions about the proper role of men and women. Id. at 725-26, 102 S.Ct. at 3337. In subsequent cases, the Court has reaffirmed the firmly established principle that the focus of the substantial relationship test is to insure that gender classifications are based on reason rather than stereotypes. See Heckler v. Mathews, 465 U.S. 728, 744, 750, 104 S.Ct. 1387, 1398, 1401, 79 L.Ed.2d 646 (1984). My colleagues suggest that intermediate scrutiny in the gender cases is about statistics, not stereotypes. But the cases themselves say the opposite. The Supreme Court, for example, has upheld logical distinctions between men and women, even when the empirical evidence was open to question. In Michael M. v. Superior Court, 450 U.S. 464, 101 S.Ct. 1200, 67 L.Ed.2d 437 (1981), the Court upheld a state statute punishing men, but not women, who have sexual relations with minors. The Court found that the law did not res[t] on 'the baggage of sexual stereotypes,'  id. at 476, 101 S.Ct. at 1208 (citation omitted), but conceded that the substantial relationship of the law to the goal of reducing teenage pregnancy was at best an opaque one, id. at 474 n. 10, 101 S.Ct. at 1207 n. 10. Rather than requiring the state to produce statistical evidence to support the nexus, however, the Court said: [w]here such differing speculations as to the effect of a statute are plausible, courts should defer to those  'armed ... with the knowledge of the facts and circumstances concerning the passage and potential impact'  of the statute. Id. (citation omitted). In Rostker v. Goldberg, 453 U.S. 57, 101 S.Ct. 2646, 69 L.Ed.2d 478 (1981), similarly, the Court upheld Congress's decision to authorize draft registration for men but not women because it found that the gender classification was not the ' accidental byproduct of a traditional way of thinking about females. '  Id. at 74, 101 S.Ct. at 2656. The justices sharply criticized the lower court for relying on the testimony of military experts to reject Congress's conclusion that conscripting women would not free up men for battle. [The] District Court was quite wrong in undertaking an independent evaluation of this evidence, rather than adopting an appropriately deferential examination of Congress's evaluation of that evidence. Id. at 82-83, 101 S.Ct. at 2661. When the Court has struck down gender classifications, it has done so because they rested on impermissible stereotypes, whether or not they were supported by statistical evidence. My colleagues misread Califano v. Westcott, 443 U.S. 76, 99 S.Ct. 2655, 61 L.Ed.2d 382 (1979), which they say struck down an AFDC program because no empirical evidence supported Congress's judgment. Ante at 396. But the Westcott Court said clearly that the gender classification was not substantially related to its objective because it was, rather, part of the 'baggage of sexual stereotypes' that presumes that the father has the 'primary responsibility to provide a home and its essentials,' while the mother is the ' center of home and family life. '  Id. at 89, 99 S.Ct. at 2663 (citations omitted). The absence of statistics was significant only because it showed that the challenged provision rested on stereotypes, not reason. The Court has also struck down gender classifications that are supported by statistics, when it has concluded that the classifications also rested on stereotypes. In Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U.S. 636, 95 S.Ct. 1225, 43 L.Ed.2d 514 (1975), for example, the Court found unconstitutional a provision of the Social Security Act authorizing benefits to widows but not widowers. Congress justified the statute on the ground that men are more likely than women to be primary supporters of their spouses and children, and the Court found the notion not entirely without empirical support. Id. at 645, 95 S.Ct. at 1232. It invalidated the provision nevertheless, holding that the statistics did not justify--in a normative sense--the denigration of the efforts of women who do work. Id. My colleagues cite Wiesenfeld to support their claim that Congress's predictive judgments must be sustained by meaningful evidence. Ante at 393. But the Wiesenfeld Court did not strike down the provision because the statistical evidence was not meaningful. It struck down the provision because it rested on an  'archaic and overbroad generalization'  that men's wages, but not women's wages, are vital to family support. Id. at 643, 95 S.Ct. at 1231 (citation omitted). My colleagues also read too much into Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190, 97 S.Ct. 451, 50 L.Ed.2d 397 (1976). In striking down an Oklahoma law that established different drinking ages for men and women, the Craig majority found the evidence supporting the age differential not trivial in a statistical sense, id. at 201, 97 S.Ct. at 459. And in concurring opinions, Justices Powell and Stevens conceded that the statistics ... do tend generally to support the view that young men drive more, possibly are inclined to drink more, and--for various reasons--are involved in more accidents than young women. Id. at 211, 97 S.Ct. at 464. (Powell, J., concurring); see also id. at 213, 97 S.Ct. at 465 (Stevens, J. concurring). In the Court's view, however, the statistics could hardly ... form the basis for employment of a gender line as a classifying device. Id. at 201, 97 S.Ct. at 459. Although the Court did review the statistical evidence, it struck down the law only after pointing out that the different drinking ages were based on social stereotypes. Id. at 202 n. 14, 97 S.Ct. at 459 n. 14. The question, as Justice Stevens explained, is whether the traffic safety justification put forward by the State is sufficient to make an otherwise offensive classification acceptable. Id. at 213, 97 S.Ct. at 465 (Stevens, J., concurring) (emphasis added). Later cases made clear what was implicit in Craig: courts must find that gender classifications rest on offensive stereotypes, rather than reasoned analysis, before striking them down. Nothing in my colleagues' long footnote calls this simple proposition into question. Ante at 393-395 n. 3. I agree, of course, that Congress's gender classifications cannot be upheld if they rest on premises that are not true. But I cannot agree that a logical premise is presumptively false until Congress commissions statistics to support it. Statistics, obviously, are one way to support a premise; but the cases make clear that Congress may also rely on logic--on reasoned analysis, permissible reasoning or legitimate inferences. The debate, in this case, however, is essentially semantic, since when the dust has settled my colleagues do not point to any stereotypes on which Congress relied. Rather than supporting my colleagues' view that gender classifications must be supported by statistical evidence, Craig v. Boren warns of the dangers of their approach: It is unrealistic to expect either members of the judiciary or state officials to be well versed in the rigors of experimental or statistical technique. But this merely illustrates that proving broad sociological propositions by statistics is a dubious business, and one that inevitably is in tension with the normative philosophy that underlies the Equal Protection Clause. Id. at 204, 97 S.Ct. at 460. Neither Metro, nor Westcott, nor Craig, nor Wiesenfeld, in short, say what my colleagues say they say: that courts can overturn congressionally mandated gender classifications whenever they are not convinced by the statistical evidence before Congress. On the contrary, Metro, following a long line of gender cases, says that the purpose of intermediate scrutiny is to ensure that Congress's judgments are based on reasoned analysis rather than archaic stereotypes.