Opinion ID: 1477292
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Burning Tree I

Text: In Burning Tree I, Stewart Bainum, in his role as taxpayer, [5] and Barbara Renschler, a taxpayer and a woman seeking membership in the Burning Tree Club, a private country club that excluded women, sued the State, the Department of Assessments and Taxation, and the Club, seeking a declaratory judgment that the primary purpose exception found in Section 19(e)(4)(i) of Article 81, Maryland Code (1957, 1980 Repl.Vol.), [6] violated the ERA. Burning Tree I, 305 Md. at 59-60, 501 A.2d at 820. The Plaintiffs also sought to enjoin the State from extending preferential tax treatment to the Club, and sought a mandate that the Club entertain applications for female membership. [7] Id. at 60, 501 A.2d at 820. Section 19 (e) authorized the Department to make agreements with private country clubs such as Burning Tree whereby, in exchange for an agreement to preserve open spaces from development for a term of years, the club would receive a reduced real property tax rate. Id. at 56-57, 501 A.2d at 818-19. The statute established a dual system of assessments, one calculated under the ordinary assumption of best use, the other, lower assessment, calculated under the assumption that the land remain undeveloped. Id. at 57, 501 A.2d at 818-19. So long as the agreement was in effect, the State collected property tax only on the lower assessed value. In case the country club breached the agreement, the State could collect taxes prospectively on the higher assessed value; moreover, a portion of the tax that would have been due based on the difference between the lower and higher assessed values would have been accelerated and become payable immediately. In 1974, the General Assembly amended Section 19(e) to add an anti-discrimination provision, which conditioned the tax benefit on an agreement not to discriminate on account of race, color, creed, sex, or national origin, unless the clubs were operated with the primary purpose, as determined by the Attorney General, to serve or benefit members of a particular sex. Burning Tree I, 305 Md. at 57, 501 A.2d at 819 (emphasis added); 1974 Md. Laws, Chap. 870. The amended statute also contained a so-called periodic discrimination clause, exempting from the anti-discrimination provision those clubs which exclude certain sexes only on certain days and at certain times. Burning Tree I, 305 Md. at 57, 501 A.2d at 819; 1974 Md. Laws, Chap. 870. There were several issues [8] before the Court in Burning Tree I: whether the roles of the State and the Department under Section 19(e) of Article 81 in conjunction with the Club's participation in the open space program, amounted to state action, [9] Burning Tree I, 305 Md. at 85, 501 A.2d at 833; whether the primary purpose clause violated the ERA; and whether the primary purpose clause was severable from the statute's overall prohibition against discrimination. [10] Id. at 80, 501 A.2d at 830-31. The Court issued three separate opinions. Id. at 56, 501 A.2d at 818 (Chief Judge Murphy, joined by Judges Smith and Orth); id. at 85, 501 A.2d at 833 (Judge Rodowsky, concurring); id. at 88, 501 A.2d at 835 (Judge Eldridge, joined by Judges Cole and Bloom). Chief Judge Murphy, joined by Judges Charles E. Orth, Jr. and Marvin H. Smith, took the position that the involvement of the State and the Department in the open space program did not constitute state action. Id. at 64-65, 501 A.2d at 822-23. In Chief Judge Murphy's opinion, Section 19(e)(4)(i) was facially neutral, id. at 71, 501 A.2d at 826, and the State bore no responsibility for the Club's discrimination, because the State did not initiate the Club's discriminatory membership policy, the State did not cause the Club to implement those policies through coercion or inducement, and the statutory purpose [11] bore no relationship to sex discrimination. Id. at 75-76, 501 A.2d at 828-29. Judge Lawrence F. Rodowsky agreed only to the extent that the actions of the Attorney General and the Department in certifying compliance with the terms of Section 19(e)(4)(i), did not, in his view, become state action as a result of the Club's participation in the open space program, id. at 85-86, 501 A.2d at 833-34, although he maintained that the statute itself constituted state action, because the statute drew sex-based distinctions on its face. Id. at 85-86, 501 A.2d at 833-34. Judge John C. Eldridge, joined by Judges Harry A. Cole and Theodore G. Bloom, totally disagree[d] with Chief Judge Murphy's view that the statute and its administration by the State were gender neutral, id. at 91, 501 A.2d at 836; furthermore, Judge Eldridge believed there clearly [was] state action, id. at 91, 501 A.2d at 836, because Section 19(e)(4)(i) drew a distinction between sex-based discrimination and other forms of discrimination, and because the administrative mechanism set up by the statute clearly involve[d] the State in the discrimination by the Club. Id. at 91-93, 501 A.2d at 836-37. A majority of the Court, consisting of Judge Rodowsky, id. at 88, 501 A.2d at 834-35, and Judges Eldridge, Cole and Bloom, id. at 91, 501 A.2d at 836, held that the primary purpose clause on its face violated the ERA. Because Judge Rodowsky disagreed with Judge Eldridge about severability, id. at 91 & n. 5, 501 A.2d at 836 & n. 5, a different majority consisting of Chief Judge Murphy, and Judges Orth and Smith, id. at 84, 501 A.2d at 832-33, agreed with Judge Rodowsky, id. at 85, 501 A.2d at 833, holding that the primary purpose clause was not severable from Section 19(e)(4)(i), thereby invalidating the entire anti-discrimination provision (and rendering the periodic discrimination clause moot). On the ERA issue, Chief Judge Murphy, writing for himself and two other judges, concluded that the primary purpose clause did not implicate the ERA and therefore, was not subject to strict scrutiny, because the clause benefitted and burdened both sexes equally, id. at 71, 501 A.2d at 826, and because the ERA was essentially limited in its scope to unequal treatment imposed by law as between the sexes. Id. at 65, 501 A.2d at 823 (emphasis added). According to Chief Judge Murphy, enactment and administration of Section 19(e)(4) constituted action by the State, id. at 70, 501 A.2d at 826; nevertheless, the statute [did] not apportion or distribute benefits or burdens unequally among the sexes, but rather [made] the tax benefit equally available to all single sex country clubs agreeing to participate in the State's open space program. Id. at 71, 501 A.2d at 826. Furthermore, [t]he only burden [was] that imposed on the public treasury as a result of the preferential tax assessment afforded to qualifying country clubs, a burden born equally by all Maryland citizens, men and women alike. Id. Likewise, the public benefits which accrue[d] from the preservation of open spaces [were] shared equally by each sex. Id. Although acknowledging that separate but equal facilities for men and women may be subject to strict scrutiny because of inherent inequality of treatment for one sex or the other in the separation process itself, id. at 79, 501 A.2d at 830, Chief Judge Murphy determined that heightened scrutiny was not implicated under the facts of Burning Tree I because the primary purpose clause was permissive, not mandatory. [12] Id. Judge Eldridge, writing for himself and two other judges, rejected the Chief Judge's gender neutral analysis, warning that Chief Judge Murphy's opinion seems to embrace a type of `separate but equal' doctrine for purposes of the E.R.A. Id. at 91, 501 A.2d at 836. Judge Eldridge stated that regardless of whether the sexes are benefitted or burdened equally, any statute that implicates gender classifications on its face must be subject to strict scrutiny, id. at 99, 501 A.2d at 840, and explained the scope of the ERA: While it is true that many of our prior cases have involved government action directly imposing a burden or conferring a benefit entirely upon either males or females, we have never held that the E.R.A. is narrowly limited to such situations. On the contrary, we have viewed the E.R.A. more broadly, in accordance with its language and purpose. Id. at 95, 501 A.2d at 838 (emphasis added). He then looked to our jurisprudence in Rand, in which we stated that the language of the ERA was `unambiguous' and `can only mean that sex is not a factor', id. at 95, 501 A.2d at 838, quoting Rand, 280 Md. at 512, 374 A.2d at 903 (emphasis added), and also in Maryland State Board of Barber Examiners v. Kuhn, 270 Md. 496, 312 A.2d 216 (1973), in which the Court took the position that under the E.R.A. classifications based on sex were `suspect classifications' subject to `stricter scrutiny.' Burning Tree I, 305 Md. at 95, 501 A.2d at 838, quoting Kuhn, 270 Md. at 506-07, 312 A.2d at 222. In a concurring opinion, Judge Rodowsky agreed with Judge Eldridge that the primary purpose clause on its face violated the ERA, which represented the holding of the case. Id. at 85, 501 A.2d at 833. Indeed, in Judge Rodowsky's view, not only was the primary purpose clause constitutionally infirm, but the periodic discrimination provision failed for exactly the same reasons. Id. at 86-87, 501 A.2d at 834. Judges Eldridge and Rodowsky differed on the severability issue; Judge Rodowsky agreed with the Chief Judge that the primary purpose clause was nonseverable, and hence, the entire anti-discrimination provision was void. Id. at 85, 501 A.2d at 833. A principal point of contention in Burning Tree I was the particular level of application of the disputed anti-discrimination provision. The Chief Judge regarded Section 19(e)(4)(i) as neutral, because in principle an all-female club could operate as a mirror-image of Burning Tree and enjoy the state tax benefit, so that the universe of consideration was the set of all eligible country clubs. Id. at 71, 501 A.2d at 826. According to this view, all country clubs were situated equally with respect to the open space program; all-female clubs and all-male clubs were free to discriminate equally, and hence, there was no ERA violation. The fact that a single all-male club just happened to be the only eligible entity under Section 19(e)(4)(i) was, in this view, an irrelevant coincidence. A majority of the Court, however, held that the universe of consideration was each particular participating club. Judge Rodowsky stated this proposition explicitly: It is not an answer to the subject argument of the appellees to say that at the elevated level of the statewide open space program established by § 19(e) the program is neutral with respect to sex, in the sense that an all female or an all male country club is eligible to participate. The ostensible prohibition against sex discrimination applies to each individual country club participating in the open space program. The universe of consideration for the particular problem created by this antidiscrimination law is any participating country club, in and of itself. Id. at 87, 501 A.2d at 834 (emphasis added), and Judge Eldridge agreed, because he directly refuted the position of the Chief Judge. Id. at 95, 501 A.2d at 838 ([T]he three apparently do not view the express sanctioning of single sex clubs as imposing a burden upon the excluded sex, as long as the governmental action in theory equally sanctions discrimination by single sex facilities against persons of the other sex.). Ironically, the positions set out by Judges Eldridge and Rodowsky find support in an article by Barbara A. Brown, Thomas I. Emerson, Gail Falk & Ann E. Freedman, The Equal Rights Amendment: A Constitutional Basis for Equal Rights for Women, 80 Yale L.J. 871, 889-93 (1971), cited at several points as support in the minority opinion of Chief Judge Murphy. Burning Tree I, 305 Md. at 64 & n. 3, 70, 79, 501 A.2d at 822 & n. 3, 825, 830. The Brown article defines why the separate but equal theory implicit in the Chief Judge's opinion ultimately subverts the meaning and purpose of the ERA. Because the basic principle of the ERA is that sex is not a permissible factor in determining the legal rights of women and men, it follows that the treatment of any person [13] under the law may not be based on the circumstance of a particular person's sex. Brown, supra at 889 (emphasis added). Accord Burning Tree I, 305 Md. at 64, 71, 501 A.2d at 822, 825; Rand, 280 Md. at 512, 374 A.2d at 903. To summarize, in Burning Tree I a majority of this Court applied strict scrutiny to invalidate an ostensibly neutral statute that drew sex-based classifications. The analysis focused on the individual level to determine whether the State had granted a benefit or imposed a burden on the basis of sex. Four Judges of this Court rejected the separate but equal approach suggested in Chief Judge Murphy's minority opinion.
Because I disagree with the majority about the meaning and purpose of the ERA, and because the legislative history of the ERA is so sparse, [14] I set out in some detail the principal cases interpreting the ERA decided by this Court before Burning Tree I, in the period between 1972 and 1985, because they afford better guidance regarding the interpretation of the ERA than any other extant source. That case law provides the backdrop for the opinions in Burning Tree I and supports the position that strict scrutiny applies in the instant case. In Maryland State Board of Barber Examiners v. Kuhn, 270 Md. at 498, 312 A.2d at 217-18, a group of cosmetologists mounted a constitutional challenge to a statutory scheme that prohibited them from cutting and shampooing men's hair on the same basis as women's. One of the statutes at issue, Section 529(a) of Article 43, Maryland Code (1957, 1973 Supp.), defined the professional services performed by cosmetologists as work . . . for the embellishment, cleanliness and beautification of women's hair. [15] A different statute, Section 323 of Article 43, Maryland Code (1957, 1973 Supp.), defined the corresponding services performed by barbers without limitation to the sex of the client. [16] Under this scheme, cosmetologists who applied to men's hair the same techniques they customarily used on women's hair, risked the loss of their licenses and even criminal prosecution. Kuhn, 270 Md. at 500-01, 312 A.2d at 218-19. In holding that Article 46 was inapplicable, id. at 505-06, 312 A.2d at 221-22, this Court said that the statute [did] not discriminate against cosmetologists of either sex; nor, for that matter, [was] there discrimination based on sex between barbers. Id. at 505, 312 A.2d at 221. The Court conceded that if a group of males, individually and on behalf of others similarly situated, were complaining that because of their sex, they were being denied the services of cosmetologists, the result would have been different. Id. at 505-06, 312 A.2d at 221. Rather, Article 46 was inapplicable because the statute at issue treated every cosmetologist and barber exactly the same, and because the victims of discrimination were not parties to the case. Therefore, Kuhn stands for the proposition that sex-based classifications trigger the ERA if the challenging party is the target of discrimination. [17] In Rand v. Rand, 280 Md. at 510-11, 374 A.2d at 902, this Court considered whether the common law duty of paternal support of minor children survived the enactment of the ERA. In a unanimous opinion, the Court held: The words of the E.R.A. are clear and unambiguous; they say without equivocation that Equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged or denied because of sex. This language mandating equality of rights can only mean that sex is not a factor. Id. at 511-12, 374 A.2d at 902-03. Therefore, the ERA mandated that the parental duty of child support was shared jointly by both parents, in derogation of the common law rule. Id. at 517, 374 A.2d at 905. In its interpretation of the Maryland ERA, the Rand Court examined cases from a number of other states construing similar provisions in their own constitutions. Id. at 512-16, 374 A.2d at 903-05. At the conclusion of its analysis, a unanimous Court stated: It is thus clear that the tests employed under constitutional provisions dealing with equality of rights range from absolute to permissive. Like the Supreme Court of Washington, however, we believe that the broad, sweeping, mandatory language of the amendment is cogent evidence that the people of Maryland are fully committed to equal rights for men and women. The adoption of the E.R.A. in this [S]tate was intended to, and did, drastically alter traditional views of the validity of sex-based classifications. Id. at 515-16, 374 A.2d at 904-05. Because the Supreme Court of Washington did not consider whether the sex-based classification at issue . . . satisfied the rational relationship or strict scrutiny test, but instead found an `overriding compelling state interest' intrinsic to the ERA, id. at 512, 374 A.2d at 903, [18] the clear implication is that this Court endorsed a near-absolute level of scrutiny for sex-based classifications. Other cases prior to Burning Tree I invalidated sex-based classifications on the basis of Article 46. For example, in Kline v. Ansell, 287 Md. 585, 414 A.2d 929 (1980), this Court considered whether the common law cause of action for criminal conversation remained viable in light of the ERA. At common law, the cause of action for criminal conversation was available only to a man. The gravamen of this action was adultery. Its elements consisted of a valid marriage and an act of sexual intercourse between a married woman and a man other than her husband. The fact that the wife consented, that she was the aggressor, that she represented herself as single, that she was mistreated or neglected by her husband, that she and her husband were separated through no fault of her own, or that her husband was impotent, were not valid defenses. Id. at 586-87, 414 A.2d at 930 (citations omitted). The Court applied Article 46, as construed in Rand, to abrogate the cause of action for criminal conversation. Id. at 593, 414 A.2d at 933. In the present case, the majority interprets Kline to buttress its view that the ERA must be applied under a benefits/burdens analysis. See op. at 258-59 & n. 24, 932 A.2d at 594 & n. 24; Kline, 287 Md. at 592, 414 A.2d at 932 (explicating this Court's holding that it would be unconstitutional to impose a burden on fathers which was not equally imposed on mothers); id. at 593, 414 A.2d at 933 (Thus, Maryland's law provides different benefits for and imposes different burdens upon its citizens based solely upon their sex. Such a result violates the ERA.). That view is simply a consequence of the particular issue posed in Kline, where the common law rule, like most sex-based classification schemes, drew categorical distinctions between males and females as classes. A more accurate interpretation of Kline results from a comparison of the rights and obligations of the husband and wife in that case. Because the elements of the tort of criminal conversation were a valid marriage and an act of sexual intercourse between the wife and a man other than her husband, it is obvious that the wife lacked a legally cognizable cause of action against the (hypothetical) mistress of her husband, whereas, at common law, the husband had a valid cause of action against the paramour of his wife. Kline, 287 Md. at 586-87, 414 A.2d at 930. But for the fact that the husband was male, he would have been unable to sustain the cause of action. It was obvious to the Court that the unequal rights under the law enjoyed by the wife, compared to the husband, could not survive the scrutiny mandated by the ERA. Id. at 593, 414 A.2d at 933 (A man has a cause of action for criminal conversation, but a woman does not.). The same conclusion results from a comparison of the legal obligations of the paramour and a hypothetical female mistress of the husband. At common law as it existed in this State up to 1980, for the act of engaging in sexual relations with the wife, the paramour was liable for damages to the husband. But for the fact he was male, the paramour would have suffered no liability. The hypothetical female mistress in our example could not have been sued for criminal conversation if she had engaged in sexual relations with the husband, even though she had engaged in the same conduct as the paramour. Clearly, such a sex-based classification scheme could not withstand the scrutiny mandated by the ERA. Id. (The common law cause of action for criminal conversation . . . cannot be reconciled with our commitment to equality of the sexes.). Therefore, the conclusion drawn from Kline is that analysis of sex-based classifications focuses on the rights and obligations of the particular person affected by the classification. See also Burning Tree I, 305 Md. at 70, 501 A.2d at 825 (opinion of Murphy, C.J.) (The equality between the sexes mandated by the Maryland E.R.A. is of `rights' of individuals `under the law.')(emphasis added). Assuming other personal characteristics are held constant, the appropriate analysis under the ERA should compare the person affected by the challenged classification with a similarly situated person of the opposite sex, and then determine whether her rights or obligations have been altered. Viewed through this lens, it becomes clear that every sex-based classification that fails the benefits/burdens test must necessarily fail strict scrutiny at the individual level. This Court applied that analysis in the time span from 1972 until Burning Tree I. See Kline, 287 Md. at 591, 414 A.2d at 932, where the Court quoted approvingly from Rand's language that [t]he adoption of the E.R.A. in this state was intended to, and did, drastically alter traditional views of the validity of sex-based classifications. Rand, 280 Md. at 515-16, 374 A.2d at 905. It is also noteworthy that the Kline Court examined the legislative history surrounding criminal conversation and determined that, standing alone, history would have supported the inference that the General Assembly had intended to leave the common law doctrine in place. 287 Md. at 590-91, 414 A.2d at 931-32. In 1945, the General Assembly had abolished the closely related cause of action for alienation of affections, [19] but left standing the cause of action for criminal conversation. Id. at 590, 414 A.2d at 931-32. The crucial intervening fact during that time was the adoption of Article 46, which additional factor was of sufficient significance to persuade us that the action for criminal conversation [was] no longer viable. Id. at 591, 414 A.2d at 932. In Condore v. Prince George's County, 289 Md. 516, 425 A.2d 1011 (1981), this Court considered whether the common law doctrine of necessaries survived the enactment of the ERA. The majority determined that the ERA abrogated the doctrine, under which the husband had a legal duty to supply his wife with necessaries suitable to their station in life, but the wife had no corresponding obligation to support her husband, or supply him with necessaries, even if she had the financial means to do so. Id. at 520, 425 A.2d at 1013. The Court agreed unanimously that the ERA mandated sex-neutrality for the doctrine of necessaries. Compare id. at 532, 425 A.2d at 1019 ([E]xtend[ing] the common law necessaries doctrine to impose liability upon wives, or eliminating the necessaries doctrine in its entirety, both would satisfy the general purpose of the ERA to proscribe sex-based classifications.), with id. at 533, 425 A.2d at 1019 (Rodowsky, J., dissenting) (I agree that this Court has the power to decide, based on the ERA . . . that the necessaries doctrine applies alike to both sexes.). The majority relied on Rand in its determination that the words of the ERA clearly and unambiguously mandated equality of rights between men and women and `canonly mean that sex is not a factor.' Id. at 524, 425 A.2d at 1015, quoting Rand, 280 Md. at 512, 374 A.2d at 903. The dissenters likewise believed the ERA and acts of the General Assembly have made it plain beyond doubt that family support obligations are no longer exclusively imposed on the male. Id. at 533, 425 A.2d at 1020. Nowhere did the Court invoke comparisons of men and women as classes. See op. at 254, 932 A.2d at 591. To summarize, in the years prior to Burning Tree I, our cases construing the ERA consistently applied strict scrutiny to sex-based classifications. This Court repeatedly affirmed its commitment to uphold the will of the People of Maryland to eradicate state sanctioned unequal treatment based on the happenstance of a particular person's sex.
In Burning Tree I, Judge Eldridge also examined cases from other jurisdictions interpreting state constitutional amendments similar to Maryland's ERA, Burning Tree I, 305 Md. at 96-98, 501 A.2d at 839-40, and recognized that courts in Massachusetts, Washington and Illinois interpreted ERA provisions in their own constitutions to require strict scrutiny of sex classifications. [20] Id. That body of case law helped shape our own interpretation of the ERA, and supports the idea that strict scrutiny should apply here. [21] See, e.g., Rand, 280 Md. at 512, 374 A.2d at 903 (Cases from other state jurisdictions interpreting the breadth and meaning of their equal rights amendments are instructive in ascertaining the reach of Maryland's E.R.A.). For example, the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts interpreted the Massachusetts ERA [22] to require application of the strict scrutiny-compelling State interest test to assess  any governmental classification based solely on sex. Opinion of the Justices to the House of Representatives, 374 Mass. 836, 371 N.E.2d 426, 428 (1977) (emphasis added). The court considered whether a proposed statute, House No. 6723, barring girls from participation with boys in football and wrestling, was permitted by the ERA. [23] The court compared decisions from a number of states that had adopted equal rights amendments, and held that the purpose of the ERA was to require, when evaluating sex-based equal protection claims, strict scrutiny rather than intermediate scrutiny, [24] the standard applied by federal and state courts to sex-based equal protection claims under the Fourteenth Amendment. Opinion of the Justices, 371 N.E.2d at 428 (To use a standard in applying the Commonwealth's equal rights amendment which requires any less than the strict scrutiny test would negate the purpose of the equal rights amendment and the intention of the people in adopting it.). Application of strict scrutiny led the court to conclude that the proposed legislation would be unconstitutional: The enactment of House No. 6723 would violate [the Massachusetts ERA]. The absolute prohibition in the proposed legislation cannot survive the close scrutiny to which a statutory classification based solely on sex must be subjected. A prohibition of all females from voluntary participation in a particular sport under every possible circumstance serves no compelling State interest. Id. at 429-30. Judge Eldridge also relied upon Darrin v. Gould, 85 Wash.2d 859, 540 P.2d 882, 893 (1975), in which the Supreme Court of Washington invalidated a ban on girls' participation on high school football teams. A school district in Washington had prohibited two sisters from playing on a football team because their participation was barred by a rule of the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA), a statewide association of high schools. Id. at 883-84. As a preliminary matter, the court addressed the applicable standard of review under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and its State counterpart, Article I, Section 12 of the Washington Constitution. [25] Having held less than two years previously, in a case where the ERA [26] was inapplicable, [27] that under Washington law, sex would be regarded as an inherently suspect classification triggering strict scrutiny, Hanson v. Hutt, 83 Wash.2d 195, 517 P.2d 599, 603 (1973), [28] the court held that adoption of the ERA required an even more stringent standard than strict scrutiny. Darrin v. Gould, 85 Wash.2d 859, 540 P.2d 882, 889 (1975) (Presumably the people in adopting Const. art. 31 intended to do more than repeat what was already contained in the otherwise governing constitutional provisions, federal and state, by which discrimination based on sex was permissible under the rational relationship and strict scrutiny tests.). Henceforth, in Washington, [t]he overriding compelling state interest as adopted by the people of this state in 1972 is that: Equality of rights and responsibility under the law shall not be denied or abridged on account of sex. Id. at 893. Because the involvement of public high schools in the WIAA implicated the state action doctrine, id. at 891, the court applied the overriding compelling state interest embodied in the ERA to invalidate the statewide ban on girls' participation in high school interscholastic football. Id. at 893. A third case relied upon by Judge Eldridge in Burning Tree I was People v. Ellis, 57 Ill.2d 127, 311 N.E.2d 98, 101 (1974), in which the Supreme Court of Illinois interpreted the ERA [29] to require that classifications based on sex be regarded as suspect, and therefore, require `strict judicial scrutiny.' From the plain language of the ERA and its legislative history, the court found inescapable the conclusion that the purpose of the ERA was to supplement and expand the guaranties of the equal protection provision of the Bill of Rights of the Federal Constitution. Id. Under a strict scrutiny analysis, the court held that a statute permitting 17-year-old boys to be charged as adults for certain crimes, but requiring 17-year-old girls to be tried as juveniles, violated the Illinois ERA. [30] Id. at 99, 101.
On the basis of Rand and its progeny, and cases in sister states interpreting similar constitutional provisions, Judge Eldridge in Burning Tree I concluded that the E.R.A. renders sex-based classifications suspect and subject to at least strict scrutiny, with the burden of persuasion being upon those attempting to justify the classifications. Burning Tree I, 305 Md. at 98, 501 A.2d at 840 (emphasis in original). Therefore, [i]n this respect, the E.R.A. makes sex classifications subject to at least the same scrutiny as racial classifications. Id. (emphasis added). Even a facially neutral statute can implicate strict scrutiny if the purpose and effect of the classification are discriminatory, Judge Eldridge concluded. Id. at 100, 501 A.2d at 841. Indeed, [i]f the purpose and effect of the primary purpose provision had related to single race rather than single sex clubs, the provision, regardless of any alleged neutrality in the language, would clearly fall under the principles of Hunter v. Underwood [ [31] ]; Arlington Heights v. Metropolitan Housing Corp. [ [32] ]; Gomillion v. Lightfoot [ [33] ], and similar cases. Id. at 102, 501 A.2d at 842 (emphasis added). In Judge Eldridge's view, Section 19(e)(4)(1), which prohibited discrimination on the grounds of race, color, creed, sex, or national origin, but permitted sexual discrimination when the country club's primary purpose was to serve or benefit members of a particular sex, was unconstitutional both on its face and in its effect. Id. at 99-102, 501 A.2d at 840-42. Because at all times from the enactment of the primary purpose anti-discrimination provision, until the time the case was litigated, Burning Tree was the only entity to which the provision applied, id. at 100, 501 A.2d at 841, it was undisputed that the purpose and effect of Section 19(e)(4)(1) were to permit one country club to maintain its discriminatory policy while continuing to receive a substantial state benefit. Id. at 101, 501 A.2d at 841. In that respect, Burning Tree I was indistinguishable from a line of Supreme Court cases that invalidated ostensibly neutral laws the effects of which were patently discriminatory on grounds of race. See, e.g., Hunter v. Underwood, 471 U.S. 222, 227, 233, 105 S.Ct. 1916, 1919-20, 1923, 85 L.Ed.2d 222, 227-28, 231 (1985) (facially neutral state constitutional provision disenfranchising disproportionate numbers of African-Americans held in violation of Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection Clause); Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1, 11-12, 87 S.Ct. 1817, 1823-24, 18 L.Ed.2d 1010, 1017-18 (1967) (facially neutral anti-miscegenation statutes held in violation of Fourteenth Amendment Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses); Gomillion v. Lightfoot, 364 U.S. 339, 341-42, 81 S.Ct. 125, 127, 5 L.Ed.2d 110, 113 (1960) (local law altering municipal boundary to exclude nearly all African-American voters constitutionally suspect). To summarize, in Burning Tree I, a majority of this Court interpreted our prior cases to mandate a robust interpretation of the ERA. Henceforth, government action resulting in sex-based classifications would be subject to strict scrutiny, with the burden placed on the proponents of the classifications to demonstrate they were narrowly tailored to further a compelling state interest. This Court took special care to look beneath ostensibly neutral classifications to their underlying purpose and effect, in order to ferret out state sanctioned discrimination masquerading as facially neutral law.