Essay On United States Vs Virginia

United States v. Virginia: Equal Protection

Nathan O’Hara

Liberty High School

4A

United States v. Virginia is an equal rights case that argued whether it was constitutional for Virginia Military Institute (VMI) to deny women the opportunity to attend the all male Institute purely because of their genders (U.S. v. Virginia, 1996). Virginia was accused of violating the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and trying to make an all female institution as a substitute for not accepting women (U.S. v. Virginia, 1996). In response Virginia created the Virginia Women’s Institute for Leadership (VWIL) as a female alternative located at the already all female Mary Baldwin College (Chicago-Kent College of Law, 2015b). Is the creation

The creation of the VWIL was also declared to not be an equal alternative to VMI, as it did come with the same reputation and prestige that a VMI diploma has with it. The majority opinion, written by Ginsberg, said that because VMI could not justify that their restrictions on genders and how it contributed to the education or structure of the school that it was unconstitutional to deny this right to women (U.S. v. Virginia, 1996). Justice Scalia wrote the dissenting argument in which he argued that the court’s decision was more based on strict scrutiny rather than intermediate scrutiny as it was in Craig v. Boren. By not allowing women, Virginia was facing the same dilemma as Oklahoma in Craig v. Boren when the Equal Protection Clause had been called into question when state law gave two different drinking ages for different sexes. In this 7-2 case was the first to Craig v. Boren, which stated that Oklahoma having two different drinking ages for males and females was unconstitutional as it did not provide justification as to why the genders had different standards (Chicago-Kent College of Law, 2015a). Justice Thomas did not concur or descent in this case but instead chose to abstain from ruling on the case due to the fact that his son was a cadet at VMI at the time of the case (Chicago-Kent College of Law, 2015b). Doing this, Justice Thomas made sure his personal opinions and thoughts would not influence his decision and therefore he upheld the integrity of the Supreme