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EQUALITY BEFORE THE LAW: MEN AND WOMEN

Military Husbands and Wives

The Equal Rights Amendment was not ratified, but even as the states considered it, the Supreme Court was contemplating the extent to which the law could treat men and women differently. Sharron Frontiero, a lieutenant in the United States Air Force, challenged the military's benefits rules. Military wives were automatically extended health and medical benefits. But when Frontiero asked for those benefits for her husband, she was turned down. Frontiero claimed that the policy discriminated against women, violating the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of "equal protection of the laws."

Gross, Stereotyped Distinctions

In Frontiero v. Richardson (1973), the Supreme Court decided that the military policy violated the equal protection clause. The Court said that the government had to have a good reason to treat men and women differently because of their sex. It was not enough to assume that husbands support their wives, but that wives do not support their husbands. As Justice William Brennan put it, "Our statute books gradually became laden with gross, stereotyped distinctions between the sexes." Such distinctions could no longer be the basis of policy and law.

Beer, the Draft, and Statutory Rape

The Frontiero v. Richardson decision opened up a series of questions about when governments could treat men and women differently. The decision said that the government could dis-criminate between men and women, but that it had to have strong reasons to do so. The question then became how strong the reasons had to be. The Court struck down an Oklahoma law in Craig v. Boren (1976) that allowed women under twenty-one but not young men to buy 3.2 percent alcohol beer. Later decisions allowed state employers to give preferences to military veterans even though that benefited more men than women, affirmed male-only draft registration and restricted statutory rape laws to men.