Court Opinion

ID: 9426630
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:18:29.692867+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:01.984224
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stewart,
concurring in the judgment.
I agree that the appellant Whitener has standing to assert the equal protection claims of males between 18 and 21 years old. Eisenstadt v. Baird, 405 U. S. 438, 443-446; Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U. S. 479, 481; Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U. S. 249, 255-260; Buchanan v. Warley, 245 U. S. 60, 72-73; see Note, Standing To Assert Constitutional Jus Tertii, 88 Harv. L. Rev. 423, 431-436 (1974). I also concur in the Court’s judgment on the merits of the constitutional issue before us.
*215Every State has broad power under the Twenty-first Amendment to control the dispensation of alcoholic beverages within its borders. E. g., California v. LaRue, 409 U. S. 109; Joseph E. Seagram & Sons v. Hostetter, 384 U. S. 35; Hostetter v. Idlewild Bon Voyage Liquor Corp., 377 U. S. 324, 330; Mahoney v. Joseph Triner Corp., 304 U. S. 401; State Board v. Young’s Market Co., 299 U. S. 59. But “[t]his is not to say that the Twenty-first Amendment empowers a State to act with total irrationality or invidious discrimination in controlling the distribution and dispensation of liquor . . . .” California v. LaRue, supra, at 120 n. (concurring opinion).
The disparity created by these Oklahoma statutes amounts to total irrationality. For the statistics upon which the State now relies, whatever their other shortcomings, wholly fail to prove or even suggest that 3.2% beer is somehow more deleterious when it comes into the hands of a male aged 18-20 than of a female of like age. The disparate statutory treatment of the sexes here, without even a colorably valid justification or explanation, thus amounts to invidious discrimination. See Reed v. Reed, 404 U. S. 71.