Court Opinion

ID: 9425690
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:15:27.550804+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:56.999760
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice White,
dissenting.
The Florida tax exemption at, issue here is available to all widows but not to widowers. The presumption is that all widows are financially more needy and less trained *361or less ready for the job market than men. It may be that most widows have been occupied as housewife, mother, and homemaker and are not immediately prepared for employment. But theré are many rich widows who need no largess from the State; many others are highly trained and have held lucrative positions long before the death of their husbands. At the same time, there are many widowers who are needy and who are in more desperate financial straits and have less access to the job market than many widows. Yet none of them qualifies for the exemption.
I find the discrimination invidious and violative of the Equal Protection Clause. Thére is merit in giving poor widows a tax break, but gender-based classifications are suspect and require more justification than the State has offered.
I perceive no purpose served by the exemption other than to alleviate current economic necessity, but the State extends the exemption to widows who'do not need the help and denies it to widowers who do. It may be administratively inconvenient to’ make, individual determinations of entitlement and to extend the exemption to needy men as well as needy women, but administrative efficiency is not an adequate justification for discriminations based purely on sex. Frontiero v. Richardson, 411 U. S. 677 (1973); Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71 (1971).
It may be suggested that the State is entitled to prefer widows over, widowers because their assumed need is rooted in past and’ present economic discrimination against women. But this is not a credible explanation of Florida’s tax exemption; for if the State’s purpose was to compensate for past discrimination against females, surely it would not have limited the exemption to women who are widows. Moreover, even if past discrimination is considered to be the criterion for current tax exemption, *362the State nevertheless ignores all those widowers who have felt the effects of economic discrimination, whether as a member of a racial group or as one of the many who cannot escape the cycle of poverty. It seems to me that the State in this case is merely conferring an economic benefit in the form of a tax exemption and has not adequately explained why women should be treated differently from men'.
I dissent.