Court Opinion

ID: 9426709
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:45.047608+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:02.610538
License: Public Domain

Mr. Chief Justice Burger,
with whom Mr. Justice Stewart, Mr. Justice Blackmun, and Mr. Justice Rehnquist
join, concurring in the judgment.
While I am happy to concur in the Court’s judgment, I find it somewhat difficult to distinguish the Social Security provision upheld here from that struck down so recently in Califano v. Goldfarb, ante, p. 199. Although the distinction drawn by the Court between this case and Goldfarb is not totally lacking in substance, I question whether certainty in the law is promoted by hinging the validity of important statutory schemes on whether five Justices view them to be more akin to the “offensive” provisions struck down in Weinberger v. Wiesenfeld, 420 U. S. 636 (1975), and Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677 (1973), or more like the “benign” provisions upheld in Schlesinger v. Ballard, 419 U. S. 498 (1975), and Kahn v. Shevin, 416 U. S. 351 (1974). I therefore concur in the judgment of the Court for reasons stated by Mr. Justice Rehnquist in his dissenting opinion in Goldfarb, in which Mr. Justice Stewart, Mr. Justice Blackmun, and I joined.